From Board of Education Vice Chair Joe Sokolovic:
Connecticut voters are facing Morton’s fork in deciding between two candidates for governor. When it comes to education, Ryan Fazio and Ned Lamont are both horrible choices. Neither candidate has shown a comprehensive understanding of the real challenges facing Connecticut’s public schools.
The difference between them is that they come at the wrong answers from different directions.
Fazio believes Connecticut’s education challenges can largely be solved through expanded school choice and charter growth. Lamont record shows he thinks the answer is efficiency and has spent years failing to adequately fund high-need districts.
Neither candidate has the understanding or the will to do what it takes in regards to education.
Fazio’s education vision rests on a seductive political slogan and the propaganda of charter school charlatans. “Every child should be able to attend the school of their choice.” A theory that may reasonable. Parents naturally want the best opportunities for their children and for that they bear no blame.
The problem is that school choice does not create educational opportunity. It dilutes and redistributes it.
In Bridgeport, charter and other choice school enrollment has grown exponentially, while the city continues to be responsible for buildings, buses, special education, and administrative operations. Bridgeport’s (and a few other districts) challenge is not that students disappeared. Instead, students have been distributed between multiple systems while the district retains many of the same fixed costs. The Bridgeport facilities master plan documents underutilized facility capacity, making expansion of overlapping systems increasingly inefficient and more costly to taxpayers. A similar trend exists, I’m sure, in at least Hartford and New Haven
Fazio and choice lobbyists speak about ending lotteries and waitlists. What they do not discuss is who pays for duplicate transportation systems, duplicate administrative structures, and duplicate educational infrastructure. He speaks about parental choice. He rarely speaks about taxpayer efficiency, how does that sort of waste sit well with a so called fiscal conservative? Nor does he adequately address the long-standing concerns surrounding charter enrollment patterns and student representation
If charter schools are the answer, they should serve student populations that reflect the communities they serve. With English Language Learners and Special Edu students they clearly do not. Public funding should come with public obligations.
Fazio argues that zip code should not determine a child’s destiny. On that point, I agree 100%. Where he is wrong is in identifying the cause.
The main reason zip code determines opportunity in Connecticut is not a lack of school choice. It is a funding system historically and currently produces significant disparities between communities.
Now on to Lamont.
After nearly eight years in office, Connecticut still struggles with the very same educational inequities that existed when he first took office. The racial funding gap was approaching one billion dollars the last time the school and state finance project published the number sometime last year. Impoverished districts continue to face disproportionate concentrations of poverty, English Language learners, rising special education costs, and financial pressures that affluent communities simply do not experience at the same scale.
Yet the state continues to rely on property wealth to fund public education, inequities that policymakers have discussed for decades.
The ECS formula is disconnected from reality. The frozen foundation level fails to reflect education costs. Poverty weights understate the true cost of concentrated poverty. Wealth calculations continue to rely too heavily on property values that exaggerate local fiscal capacity in urban communities.
A district cannot budget its way out of structural deficits. It cannot efficiency its way into resources it never received.
Governor Lamont has often preferred deflecting his failures to fund education on local boards of ed and municipalities. Instead of adequate permanent funding increases, we get election year studies, and minimal temporary increases. Districts cannot hire teachers, provide interventions, or expand services without permanent increased revenue and investment. The irony is that both candidates avoid the same conversation. Fazio wants to talk about where students attend school. Lamont wants to talk about how the system can be slightly improved through efficiency.
Neither wants to confront this reality. Connecticut continues to allow disparities in education funding while pretending accountability alone can overcome them.
If Connecticut is serious about education, it must ensure that every district has the resources necessary to educate its’ students. That means fixing the ECS, accurately accounting for municipal capacity, and recognizing the true costs associated with educating students in high-need communities.
Connecticut deserves a governor who understands that educational opportunity begins with funding.
Unfortunately, neither Fazio nor Lamont seem to be able to grasp this simple concept.
One proposes expanding inefficient systems that duplicates costs and dilutes the taxpayer’s dollar. The other has governed for nearly 8 years in which those inequities have been allowed to grow.
Connecticut deserves better than a choice between charter expansion and educational fiscal neglect.
I cannot support either candidate.
I won’t vote for Fazio or Lamont. I will leave that space blank. I ask all voters who care about education to do the same.
Joseph Sokolovic
Opinions are my own
Well, there you have people, John in particular. 🙂
While the option not to show up is your own, it’s a pervasive thought and practice among the voting bloc in the Port.
I mean, John, you’ve been going on and QUESTIONING why 85% of Port eligible voters don’t show up. Now we have the ANSWER. 🙂
Thanks, Pencil Box. We can all go to sleep at night knowing that 85% of the people don’t show up at the polls because there is no real candidate to vote for. BTW, belated congratulations on your election win and low turnout. Good Job. 🤣
P.S. Pencil Box and 85%ers. When you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain. It was an entertaining pleasure to read your commentary, comments, and opinions. Sorry to see you go and ban yourself from public political discourse. 🙂
Did you see what I did there, people? 🙃
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkJR2LEihQY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkJR2LEihQY
Lennie could you add the Graphic with the mock ballot for our friend here so he could understand that a blank is different than not showing up to vote. Sort of like my bullet vote campiagn one cycle back.
In, he meantime my little stubby carpenters pencil, read closer and slower. It does not say don’t show up. It says leave the spot blank. I encourage everyone to leave the Governor’s vote Dem Down the line and starting with Lieutenant Gov, change to BENJAMIN WESELEY over Himes on the IND and continue to vote Dem.
Exercise your right to vote and leave the Governor’s line Blank.
Fair enough, touche 🙂
But you forgot the BAM!🤣
However, your mock ballot is just that. In the real world, there is no black ballot line to vote for. 🙂
“I won’t vote for Fazio or Lamont. I will leave that space blank. I ask all voters who care about education to do the same.”
“In, meantime my little stubby carpenters pencil, read closer and slower.”
Although, I believe I said,
” P.S. Pencil Box and 85%ers. When you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain. It was an entertaining pleasure to read your commentary, comments, and opinions. Sorry to see you go and ban yourself from public political discourse.”
Check your Pencil Box, Pencil Box. 🙂
I think Betty was Liberal, John. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOWR0CfMUZE
Clarity, Pencil Box: ” It was an entertaining pleasure to read your commentary, comments, and opinions. Sorry to see you go and ban yourself from public political discourse. 🙂”
was directed to you. 🙂
P.S. When Y’all going to wrap up this God of Gabriel shit show in the Middle East? I don’t want to hear it when y’all start getting on the Keymaster’s nerves. Read your books, people. JS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOMrOKHMMPU&list=RDSOMrOKHMMPU&start_radio=1
Thank you Lennie.
Pencil Box, following the ways of John 🙂
Quick question.
Let’s say someone, perhaps that 85 % 🙂 follows the path you set forth and doesn’t vote for either candidate for governor on the ballot, but feels every candidate on the ballot in every race needs to be left blank.
Do they still need to show up at the polls, and would they need ID? 🤣
What say you, Stan, regarding Pencil Box’s “Opinions are my own”? 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pji_IX-UacM
Final thoughts, Pencil ✏ Box.
While the opinions are your own, to vote ❎, you don’t get to have an opinion or an option to “complain” about anything that comes out of the Governor’s office. 🙂
That being said, I don’t know who’s the douche or tard on the ballot for governor. I mean, Fazio comes off like a douche but looks like a tard. Did you see what I did there, poeople/Lamont. 😉
My bad,
Turd.
Not to be confused with Hankey; Hankey’s special. 🤣
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BLf5d9CoAvA
Charter schools should reflect the student population of the towns they “serve”.
Cherry picking students is contrary to democratic principles
By what means is cherry-picking students contrary to the democratic principles?
The core of Democracy is: Majority rule and minority rights: Decisions are made by a majority vote, but the basic rights of minority groups are still protected. According to Google. Reflection has nothing to do with anything, per se.
So if the majority says cherry picking studetns on ok it doesn’t contradict democracy’s democratic principle.
Even that’s disingenuous. The latter part, that is: “but the basic rights of minority groups are still protected.” That’s a Republic /constitutional thing more that a democracy thing. JS
The issue with your statement is that it has been said that the Port’s student body is 95% minority. So I don’t quite understand what reflection you are talking about.
If “cherry-picking” is going on, it is based on perhaps aptitudes on a level and/or coded sides. Where, if a coded side (let’s say coded side God is Good) runs and has oversight through that democratic principle. Students who were placed in that coded side (God is Good) would be cherry-picked to a better school or teacher and so forth. And those students who are placed on the coded side of Great will be disinfrancise base on that. Would I think No? John? JS
God is Fabulous 🙂 In the spirit of jelly donuts 🙂
The Prophet,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UZ2EGcgAMY&list=RD-UZ2EGcgAMY&start_radio=1