Education stakeholders — including lawmakers, superintendents and municipal leaders — gathered Thursday to call out Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration for a lack of financial investment in K-12 education and to urge state leadership to make it a priority in the upcoming 2024 legislative session.
Constrained by a pledge to not increase spending, Gov. Ned Lamont is rolling out modest initiatives for the coming legislative session, including a bump in day care spending that would require a cut in education funding.
Boxed in by a budget that embraces the fiscal guardrails put in place before he was elected, Gov. Ned Lamont will tinker around the edges when it comes to adjusting the two-year budget.
Hundreds of staff members at Connecticut schools could face layoffs as federal pandemic-relief funds expire, and state lawmakers appear unlikely to come to the rescue. A year after signing off on $150 million in additional funding for K-12 education, Gov. Ned Lamont will seek to redirect some of those funds to early child care, his budget chief said Wednesday.
By cutting the legislature’s historic, bipartisan investment in K-12 education made just eight months ago, the governor is proposing a budget built on broken promises while turning his back on the needs of students, families, and educators throughout the state.
Connecticut school districts have spent $981 million of a total $1.7 billion in federal pandemic relief funds meant to offset the costs of educational expenses like paying teachers and improving facilities, according to a Thursday update by the School + State Finance Project.