Trumbull State Reps Work to Reduce Education Funding Mandate

Trumbull state representatives David Rutigliano and Laura Devlin are working to reduce mandated education funding in order to better reflect declining school enrollment.

Top performing schools would be granted the greatest flexibility while Alliance districts would be exempt.

More from the representatives:

“It is a common sense proposal,” Devlin said. “We are just asking for a reduction in education funding to reflect savings associated with declining student enrollment.”

“The professionals who work for our towns and for our school districts are completely capable of determining how much funds their schools need. The state does not need to have the responsibility of setting their spending requirements. This is a good bill and the majority Connecticut’s municipalities agree,”Rutigliano said

Currently, the State of Connecticut has Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) rules which prevent municipalities from dropping education funding below specified amounts. Spending reductions by Boards of Education (BOE) are currently limited to .5% per year.

The bill would increase the allowable spending reductions by BOE to 1.5% or 3% for declining enrollment, based on the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch. In addition, a local BOE can apply for approval of further cuts from the state Department of Education. The top 10% performing school districts do not have a spending reduction cap and do not need an SDE signoff.

The legislature enacted the Minimum Budget Requirement MBR ten years ago to ensure that education cost sharing (ECS) funding for each of the 169 towns was being spent on education. Since then, school enrollment has declined in many districts and the result has been a number of school districts struggling under MBR due to declining enrollment.