Statement from the Connecticut School Finance Project on Today's Supreme Court Ruling in CCJEF v. Rell
School + State Finance Project
January 17, 2018 - 2 minutes
New Haven, Conn. — In response to the opinion handed down today from the Connecticut Supreme Court in the case of Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. Rell, the Connecticut School Finance Project has released the following statement from director and founder Katie Roy.
Note: The Connecticut School Finance Project is not involved with the case, nor is it affiliated with the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding or any of the plaintiffs in the case.
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While the Connecticut Supreme Court has concluded Connecticut’s school finance system passes constitutional muster, it rightly acknowledged that that system is far from perfect.
Although today’s reversal, of the Superior Court’s finding that the way Connecticut distributes state education aid is unconstitutional, is disappointing, we appreciate the Court lending its voice to the call for state policymakers “to do all that [they] reasonably can to ensure not only that all children in this state have the bare opportunity to receive the minimally adequate education required by article eighth, § 1, of the Connecticut constitution, but also that the neediest children have the support that they need to actually take advantage of that opportunity.”
As our organization has said from the beginning, the goal of Connecticut’s school finance system should not be to simply meet the minimum constitutional requirement. The goal should be an equitable, predictable, and consistent system for how our State allocates roughly $2 billion in education funding. This is not an ideological, partisan, or legal goal - - it's just good governance.
In the bipartisan budget passed and signed into law in October, the General Assembly took several positive steps in the direction of equitable school funding, but there is much more that can, and should, be done.
We will continue to work with policymakers on both sides of the aisle to make equitable school funding a reality in Connecticut, and to implement a school finance system our state can be proud of, rather than one that simply meets the bare minimum.
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