Governor Ned Lamont talks a good game when it comes to education, but with the state bulging surpluses education advocates argue his investment in schools has not kept pace with inflation.

Hundreds of Connecticut students, led by cities, made their case in Hartford with personal stories about education abandonment.

Estevan Martins, who migrated from Brazil five years ago to Bridgeport, took a deep breath before describing how he’s preparing for a pullback of multilingual services and supports that have been crucial to his education. He said budget constraints will likely eliminate the staff that’s helped him feel safe, supported and seen.

The four students were among hundreds from across the state who flooded the Legislative Office Building Thursday and led their own news conference urging Gov. Ned Lamont to “prioritize funding for our public education.”

“Over the years, I watched staff who changed my life, mentors who guided me, teachers who believed in me, disappear because of funding cuts. What will happen next? Will we lose our math teachers, our English teachers? When will we stop?” Martins said.

“We’re not asking more than what others already have. We’re asking for fairness, for equity. Students in Bridgeport work just as hard and dream just as big as any student in any other district, but we are being asked to do it with less support, less opportunity and less hope.”

Full story:

CT students, armed with personal stories, call on Lamont to invest in schools

by Jessika Harkay, CT Mirror
May 8, 2025

When a dozen Connecticut students described their high schools at a news conference Thursday, each child gave a little laugh of disbelief.

Johanelyz Arroyo, a senior from Hillhouse High School in New Haven, described how her school can’t afford sketchbooks for its art class. A teacher instead has made their own by hand through stapling pieces of scrap paper together.

Indy Nunes hasn’t had a certified chemistry teacher in seven months at her Norwalk high school, she said. Her class is conducted online with a substitute teacher who takes attendance.

One Hartford student, who mainly spoke in Spanish, recalled a blood drive at his school that ended early — not because of a lack of volunteers, but because the school facility didn’t have air conditioning to properly store the donations.

And Estevan Martins, who migrated from Brazil five years ago to Bridgeport, took a deep breath before describing how he’s preparing for a pullback of multilingual services and supports that have been crucial to his education. He said budget constraints will likely eliminate the staff that’s helped him feel safe, supported and seen.

The four students were among hundreds from across the state who flooded the Legislative Office Building Thursday and led their own news conference urging Gov. Ned Lamont to “prioritize funding for our public education.”

“Over the years, I watched staff who changed my life, mentors who guided me, teachers who believed in me, disappear because of funding cuts. What will happen next? Will we lose our math teachers, our English teachers? When will we stop?” Martins said.

“We’re not asking more than what others already have. We’re asking for fairness, for equity. Students in Bridgeport work just as hard and dream just as big as any student in any other district, but we are being asked to do it with less support, less opportunity and less hope.”

Students from Bridgeport, Hartford, New London, New Haven, Norwalk, Vernon and Waterbury were in attendance, joined by a handful of superintendents and other community leaders.

The group later delivered a letter to the governor’s office that called for equitable school funding and the passage of Senate Bill 1511, which has passed out of the Education Committee and has been sent to Appropriations.

The bill calls to raise the “foundation” amount of per-pupil funding in the state’s Education Cost Sharing Grant by over $960, to at least $12,488 per pupil, and also proposes a new added 50% weight for students with disabilities who receive special education services.

“Districts across the state are suffering from our state’s failure to fully deliver on what should be the promise of public education. High need students, including low income students, students with disabilities and multilingual learners do not receive adequate funding to support their unique learning needs,” said New Haven Superintendent Madeline Negrón.

David Bednarz, Lamont’s senior press secretary, defended the governor’s investment in education in a written statement Thursday.

“Since taking office, Gov. Lamont’s budgets have increased school funding by 22%, which has made our schools among the best in the country,” Bednarz said, adding that the governor “continues to meet with legislative leaders and looks forward to signing a budget that continues to support our state’s outstanding schools.”

Districts stretch their budgets

The students and district leadership said Thursday that Connecticut school boards are working to finalize their 2025-26 budgets, where hundreds, even thousands, of school staff will likely be laid off in upcoming months if the state doesn’t provide more funding support.

Layoffs are just one part among a series of other reductions to student services, which include cuts to reading intervention, tutoring and after-school programs.

In New Haven, a $23 million budget deficit could mean the removal of over 150 positions, including layoffs and closing vacancies. On the ground more specifically this means the district will not have a single librarian and will face major cuts to its art and music departments.

“Students and educators are here today to fight for simple truth, there is no single reason my fellow students and I cannot receive a quality education — a holistic one complimented by the arts,” said John Carlos Serana Musser, a student representative on the New Haven Board of Education and a junior at Wilbur Cross High School.

“There’s not one reason why my fellow students and I cannot receive an education where our research and love of reading is fostered by the warm smile and guiding hand of a librarian. There’s not one reason for this to be happening in a state that sits on a $4.6 billion [surplus] in the richest country in the world,” he said.

In Bridgeport and Norwalk, district leaders said they are facing similar layoffs to staff and reductions of services.

“We are losing counselors, teachers, support staff, effective programs and resources that have been vital, particularly after the pandemic when our scholars lost so much,” said Norwalk Superintendent Alexandra Estrella, who also told The Connecticut Mirror that she’s anticipating layoffs of over 100 staff members.

“This isn’t just about budgets,” Bridgeport Superintendent Royce Avery added at the press conference Thursday. “It’s about whether our students have access to resources, opportunities and support they need to thrive in Bridgeport and districts across this state. We have plans, we have a vision, and now we need the state’s investment.”

The legislature’s proposal

In late April, the legislature’s Appropriations Committee adopted a $55.7 billion two-year budget that would require Connecticut to legally exceed its spending cap for the first time since 2007 and reform another key savings program.

Legislators pushed back against Lamont earlier this year, ordering $40 million in supplemental aid this fiscal year to local schools to offset what many called a crisis in special education. The School and State Finance Project, a nonpartisan education policy group, estimated districts needed $108 million.

The governor has proposed sending schools an extra $40 million annually for special education, but not for another two years. The committee budget released on April 22 maintained the extra $40 million in state payments in both the 2025-26 and 2026-27 fiscal years, but also recommended $124 million in extra special education grants in each of the next two years.

The committee also pushed back on Lamont over the Education Cost Sharing grant, the main funding program to support local elementary and secondary school operating expenses. The committee proposed an extra $26 million in funding over the next two years combined to ensure that about 80 communities would not face a reduction in ECS as called for under the state’s statutory formula. The system weighs local wealth, enrollment totals and past local education spending in calculating the state’s contribution.

At a news conference Thursday morning House Speaker Matt Ritter and Majority Leader Jason Rojas said budget negotiations remain ongoing.

“Above and beyond what we were scheduled to increase in terms of ECS, I think it’s a challenge,” Rojas said. “It’s all subject to spending cap and in budget — whatever room we have within it to do it.”

Ritter promised a funding boost for Hartford Public Schools compared to last year, but said he couldn’t “speak to other cities.”

New Haven Superintendent Negrón said, “Our state legislators have been loud and clear that they want to do more because they have heard from everybody across the state. … I know, and you should know, that the only person that stands in front of that being a possibility that would help us all across the state is Gov. Lamont.”

Earlier this year, education advocates had pushed for $545 million in increased funding, a figure derived from an October report put out by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which offered recommendations for reengaging students who have lost touch with the education system.

New Haven’s Negrón said that ask is out of the question right now, “because there are other needs.”

Norwalk Superintendent Alexandra Estrella added, “We’re bleeding staff left and right and class sizes are going to increase. We also have issues that we might not be able to fully schedule students because we don’t have enough personnel. We just got out of a pandemic. The crisis has not ended yet. The resources have been depleted, and the need continues to live and what is the state going to do to help us maintain programs so that it doesn’t always fall on the taxpayers back?”

CT Mirror reporter Keith Phaneuf contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on CT Mirror and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.