Governor’s Revised FY 2016-17 Budgets for the State Department of Education and Office of Early Childhood

On April 12, 2016, Governor Dannel Malloy proposed revisions to his original February 2016 budget for fiscal year 2016-17. These line-item recommendations for the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) and the Office of Early Childhood (OEC) are included in this document. This summary and analysis compares the FY 2015-16 appropriations for the CSDE and OEC with the agencies’ proposed appropriations in the governor’s latest FY 2016-17 budget proposal.

When comparing the governor’s latest FY 2016-17 budget proposal to the FY 2015-16 adjusted budget, there are significant changes in the CSDE budget, including:

1. ($43.4 million) for the Education Cost Sharing grant (Note: Though towns will have decreases totaling $53 million, it appears the General Fund will pick up $10 million for ECS that was separately funded from the Municipal Revenue Sharing Account);
2. ($25 million) for transportation grants, the funding for which is transferred to the Municipal Revenue Sharing Fund;
3. ($16 million) for magnet schools;
4. ($8 million) for Excess Costs special education grants;
5. ($7.6 million) to eliminate summer school and extended day portions and reduce the Priority School District grant;
6. ($3.2 million) to reduce funding for the Regional Vocational Technical High Schools;
7. ($1.6 million) to reduce the Adult Education grant;
8. $62 million for fringe benefits;
9. $10.5 million for charter schools;
10. $3.5 million for Open Choice;
11. $1.9 million for state-administered assessments; and
12. $1 million for the Commissioner’s Network of schools.

For the OEC, when comparing the governor’s latest FY 2016-17 budget proposal to the FY 2015-16 adjusted budget, there are significant changes, including:

1. ($4.2 million) to eliminate about 1,600 part-time, high-quality preschool slots and over 240 extended-day spaces and replace them with about 800 school day, school year slots (across programs);
2. ($1.4 million) to reduce early intervention programming for infants and toddlers;
3. $2.1 million to fund child care centers (including high quality preschool);
4. $1.5 million which represents costs to create some of the 800 new slots mentioned above; and
5. $1.2 million for child care programs for working lower-income families.

Please note this analysis does not address FY 2015-16 estimated expenditures. For example, H.B. 5043, the FY 2015-16 deficiency bill, includes an OEC deficit of over $6 million in the Birth to Three program account. Dealing with agency program deficiencies during a “fiscal crisis” is always complicated and rather than address this or any other program shortfall here, only the financial resources (e.g. FY 2015-16 appropriations as adjusted and the governor’s latest FY 2016-17 budget proposal) for CSDE and OEC are shown below.

Note: This summary and analysis is intended for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as either supporting or opposing any of the provisions in the proposed budget.