Some Connecticut lawmakers are raising concerns about oversight of public school funding and said they plan to push for several education reforms after The Connecticut Mirror published an investigation about a Hartford student with a disability who alleges she graduated without the ability to read or write.
Bipartisan leaders of the state legislature’s Education Committee said the CT Mirror’s story illustrated a “broken system” that they were aware of “anecdotally.”
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Last year, Senate Democratic lawmakers, in particular, advocated for more transparency in educational spending — arguing that despite a requirement for schools to report their spending to the Connecticut Department of Education, the categories often lack detail, which “makes it difficult to compare the spending practices of school districts, even if they are similarly sized.”
The passage of Senate Bill 1 in 2023 has required the state Department of Education to begin annually publishing each school district’s receipts, expenditures and statistics on its website, whereas by 2025, the department will also need to develop and publish the data in a format “that allows financial comparisons between school districts and schools,” according to the legislation.
But lawmakers and other education advocates question whether that’s enough.
The School and State Finance Project, a Connecticut-based nonprofit policy organization, has advocated for further development of the 2023 legislation, where all school systems would move to some type of “uniform chart of accounts.”
“One of the reasons why there’s been pushback is on the administrative burden it may cause on districts to be able to switch over to a system that is different than what they’re currently using now,” said Michael Morton, the deputy executive director for communications and operations at the School and State Finance Project. “But when you don’t have something uniform, it’s very hard to compare spending. It’s very hard to compare where resources are going.”
Another proposal that’s been presented before would require some type of spending outline before a funding increase is allocated to a district.
“If there’s areas that [the legislature would] want to make sure that [Educational Cost Sharing] increases go to, they could specify that in statute — that whatever amount of funding a district receives over ‘X’ amount of time, or over their grant from a certain year needs to go to X, Y and Z priorities,” Morton said.