Municipal leaders, educators, superintendents and students from across Connecticut joined forces Thursday to call on lawmakers to invest more money in education.
They are pushing leaders to adopt policy solutions recommended by the 119k Commission to help remedy the state’s crisis of at-risk and disconnected youth. Organizers said Connecticut is not a leader in financially supporting public education.
“Connecticut at the state level supports 36% of education funding — 36% of education budgets come from the state,” the CEO of Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, Joe DeLong, said. “Most of our surrounding states are anything from 41- 45%. We are in the lowest quartile in the country.”
“This is simply putting money where it matters and prioritizing education once and for all,” Democratic State Rep. Jeff Currey (11th District) said.
The 119k Commission recommends that the state revise the education cost-sharing formula and invest more than $545 million in education by loosening the state’s fiscal guardrails and tapping into the budget surplus.