School Board Vice Chair: Invest Additional State Dollars In Education

Governor Ned Lamont, in the waning days of the General Assembly’s session, has ponied up “$270 million in additional state funding going to our cities and towns to support our schools and town services and mitigate local tax increases.”

Board of Education Vice Chair Joe Sokolovic declares in this commentary that the extra dough for Bridgeport must be invested in schools.

One-Time Money. One Permanent Choice. Bridgeport Must Put This Where It’s Mouth Is Our Schools.

Bridgeport is about to receive a rare infusion of additional state dollars, roughly estimated around nine million dollars in one‑time municipal aid. That money did not fall from the sky. It exists because our state delegation and Governor finally acknowledged something Bridgeport parents, educators, and taxpayers have known for years: our children have been carrying way too much, with way too little, for way too long.

The question now is not whether Bridgeport students need the money. The question is does the Mayor and City Council believe they matter most when times are tight.

There should be no debate. Not this time. These dollars must all go to education. The Mayor and City Council have already committed to $5 million with the council committed to seeking more.

Let me be clear. I believe this money belongs in the Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR). That is where Bridgeport can truly commit to education. That is where true commitment lives. Anything less keeps our school system permanently balanced with one foot dangling over the cliff. All together, as things currently stand, I estimate Bridgeport will receive an infusion in ECS of roughly $15 million and an even rougher guesstimate of $10 million of the Pequot dollars if the city passes through every dollar. That leaves us $19 million dollars short before accounting for the Mayor’s proposed $5 million dollars. So I ask the city council to find the other $14 million dollars needed to avoid a single cut this year. I ask that this money be added to the MBR so we do not have to fight for our children’s very future again next year.

But I understand the political reality unique to Bridgeport, a reality that is both embarrassing and indefensible.

Year after year after year, Bridgeport has funded its local share of education at the lowest per‑pupil level in the entire state of Connecticut. Not near the bottom. At the bottom. Dead last. While other districts argue over adequacy, Bridgeport fight for their very survival.

History matters. It strips away any claim of good faith, should the city not act differently this time around. It exposes a past city government that has treated education as a burden rather than an investment in our city’s future. It means that any attempt to divert these dollars away from schools will be seen for what it is: the continuation of a long‑standing pattern of child neglect.

Let’s be honest about why some of this money is here in the first place. The one‑time $100 million allocation is being distributed using the Mashantucket Pequot–Mohegan Fund formula — a formula designed to respond to deep fiscal and educational distress. Bridgeport does not receive a significant share of this funding by accident. We receive it because the numbers are undeniable: high poverty, low property wealth, and years of chronic under‑investment in our children.
This is not bonus money. It is belated acknowledgment.

To send these dollars anywhere but education is not an option. It is misrepresentation. It is the city saying one thing in Hartford, our schools are underfunded, and at home, schools will wait.

Some will argue that because the money is one‑time, it should not be placed into education at all. That argument conveniently ignores the fact that Bridgeport, much like the state, has been balancing budgets on the backs of children for decades. Bridgeport Public schools has been, deferring maintenance, cutting supports, and pushing costs into the future. Schools have already absorbed the one‑time consequences of permanent underfunding to the tune of over 400 positions in the last decade.

Others will warn about over‑funding the Board of Education. That warning rings hollow in a city that has never once meaningfully tested what adequate funding even looks like. You cannot overfund something you have systematically starved.

No one is asking for fiscal recklessness. I am asking for integrity. There is no shortage of one‑time, high‑impact educational uses for this money: restoring programs that were cut, addressing special education pressures, stabilizing staffing, and providing students the basic supports they have been denied for years. Put it in the MBR and let the education experts decide.

Here is the reality the Mayor and City Council must understand: diverting this money away from education will be a conscious political choice. It will not be viewed as neutral. It will not be forgotten. And it will permanently undermine any future claim that this city prioritizes children.

Bridgeport cannot continue to say education is its top priority while funding proves otherwise. This moment removes all plausible deniability.

When money arrives because of educational distress, there is no moral or political justification for sending it anywhere else.

Put the money in education. Put it where history says it never goes. And put it there in the open.

Anything less is not just bad policy. It is a statement of values — and it is one Bridgeport can no longer afford to make.