Education advocates are calling on state lawmakers to increase funding for Connecticut school districts. They say it is necessary to help at-risk youth succeed.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said the state can do more.
“The reality is, we in Connecticut, our state as a whole, is not doing enough, and much of today is about calling on the state, who has already done a lot for our kids, to do significantly more, in particular, dramatically changing the funding so that we can ensure that all of our kids have an opportunity to thrive,” Elicker said.
Elicker is also a member of the 119K Commission, a bipartisan group of local and state officials, advocates and educators, which recently released a report calling for millions in additional state funding for a variety of resources designed to help youth at risk of dropping out of school or being unemployed.
The report called for the state to give an extra $545 million to local school districts. Doing so would mean revising what is known as the Education Cost Sharing formula, which takes into account poverty levels, the wealth of the municipalities school districts serve and other metrics.