Gov. Malloy Announces Education Funding Plans at Roger Sherman

The kids knew who he was long before he got there.

“Hi, I’m Dan Malloy,” said the newly minted Governor as he bent down to shake the hand of a shy Roger Sherman student named Cheyan Wiggins on Friday.

Without missing a beat, fellow student Jose Santos said, “I thought you said ‘Dannel.’”

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy toured Roger Sherman Elementary School on Meriden’s east side Friday morning, talking with kids, teachers, parents, and local officials, before he gave a speech that would make administrators breathe a sigh of relief.

In the school’s gymnasium, Malloy announced to third, fourth and fifth graders bearing self-made welcome signs, officials and members of the press that the state would fill a $271 million hole in Connecticut education funding left by expiring federal stimulus dollars for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

“One of the things that we’ve decided to do in next year’s state budget is to make sure that the schools in the state that rely on some of their funding to come from the state government – and in Meriden, that’s a lot – are going to have the same amount of money that they had in the current year,” Malloy said to the crowd. He is slated to unveil the full budget at the state capitol on Wed, Feb. 16.

This is welcome news for districts around the state, but particularly important for Meriden’s public school system.

The City’s Board of Education announced last fall that it was looking down the barrel of a projected $11 million shortfall for the 2011-2012 academic year, due to the loss of the federal stimulus dollars which fund the state’s Education Cost Sharing or ECS program, and other federal grants.

“I’m really glad to hear that (Malloy) is making up the funds we thought we were losing,” Roger Sherman’s Principal Louise Moss said about the announcement. “We thought we were going to be losing more positions.”

The district is already slated to cut 19 certified and 7 non-certified positions in the 2011-2012 academic year to save on costs. In the past three years, the district has eliminated 56 certified and 21.5 non-certified jobs.

Class size has increased – in 2006 only seven classrooms had more than 25 students in them, and today more than 50 classes hold more than 25 students – according to the Meriden Coalition for Education Excellence, which invited the governor to speak.

Malloy’s announcement means Meriden will receive $7.6 million in ECS funds for the next year, according to District Superintendent Mark Benigni. That still leaves a $3.4 million gap in funds compared with the board’s 2010-2011 budget. To fill this, the board is requesting a 2.93 percent increase in funds from the city. 

In Malloy’s tour of Roger Sherman, he visited different grade levels, bilingual programs, a new parent center and a preschool class, and talked with teachers and students throughout the trip.

He chatted with a class of young students who had an extra half-hour of reading a day four times a week, and then sat in on paraprofessional Nancy Murray’s story time, as she read a book called “Tacky The Penguin” to children seated on the floor.

Malloy used these experiences in his later remarks.

“There is nothing more important, in the state of Connecticut than the acquisition early in life, of reading skills and math skills,” he said. “In fact, you in this building are proving something, that if we make sure, that if children are reading and perfecting math skills at third grade, they’re going to be successful students, probably for the rest of their lives.”

At the parent center, Roger Sherman teachers told Malloy they had just put the finishing touches on a room that they’re hoping will attract local parents to come volunteer and spend time at the school with their children.  

“Especially when you have a diverse group of kids, any time you get parents into the school it’s a good thing,” Cathy Battista of the Meriden Family Resource Center said to the governor. Her group is not yet involved in the Roger Sherman center, but works with parent resource centers in other city schools.

Malloy’s last stop before his speech was to a Roger Sherman pre-school class, where he discussed the importance of early childhood education with teacher Meg Rarey.

“I’m a big fan of his because he’s always been a supporter of preschool education,“ Rarey said. She added that she feels her students direly need preschool, because “Several of them come in not speaking English, by the end of the year, they’re speaking English. “

At the end of his speech, Malloy hinted at additional items in his forthcoming budget proposal, and added some impressions of the school.

“There’s going to be a few more things in there, for education and for cities themselves, because we’ve got to do a better job in Connecticut, we need every school to be a Roger Sherman school." Malloy said. “We need every child to have access to prekindergarten learning experiences we also need to move in the direction of having all day kindergarten in Connecticut.”

 “There’s no better example of what we have to do and the rewards of doing it, than Roger Sherman," he said.