From Democratic mayoral candidate Charlie Coviello:
COVIELLO CALLS FOR EDUCATION UNITED EFFORT
Charles Coviello, Jr, Candidate for the Democratic Nomination for Mayor of Bridgeport, called for a united effort to gain the necessary resources needed to provide for an equal education opportunity for the children of the City of Bridgeport.
Continuing in his efforts which began at the Board of Education Public hearings relating to the Budget, Charlie called upon John Ramos, Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Education (BOE) to join the parents, faculty, school support staff, community, students, clergy and graduates of Bridgeport Schools to fight to create an equitable and properly funded Education System for Bridgeport. The objective will be to fund the educational needs of the entire city school district for all children. The same request was repeated on the following Wednesday budget meeting.
Charlie called upon all members of the community to form a Unified front.
The Constitution of the State of Connecticut makes the State responsible for the education of the Children of Connecticut, not the individual towns and cities. Most of the municipalities are able to provide for those needs but Bridgeport has been incapable of generating the needed revenue. The City needs further assistance for the 23,000 students who are guaranteed an equal Public Education under our Constitution.
It is therefore incumbent upon our State leadership, Officials and Legislators to step up to the plate and provide the necessary funding to educate our children in Bridgeport in the same fashion as every other city and town in Connecticut. At the present time, Connecticut has failed to do that for our State’s largest city.
The BOE deserves to be congratulated for the brave stand it took to refuse to give our children a second class educational system. They made the difficult decision to not vote on a budget after Mayor Bill Finch cut their funding request and then locked the BOE into a no layoff commitment with the local AFSCME Union. The Education department had already published a layoff list for 400 school employees and now was committed for an additional $5 million in wages that Mayor Finch denied. He threw the children of Bridgeport under the bus to secure votes for his re-election.
As your Mayor and a former educator, I will be a structured participant in the operations of the school system. By ignoring our dysfunctional school, our political leadership has allowed our education process to disintegrate. This abysmal situation will not be allowed to continue under a Coviello administration.
Our State Board of Education has to be put on notice that their inadequate funding of the educational needs of Bridgeport’s children is unacceptable and must be corrected. Our schools are failing. Less money only will mean poorer achievement by our students. This can’t be tolerated.
I encourage every citizen of Bridgeport, including Mayor Finch, to join the leadership of our community at 6:00 PM on June 28, 2011 at Caesar Batailla School to develop an action plan that will pressure our State officials to assure our children are equally educated with all children throughout the state.
This action should include:
1. March on the Governor’s Office in Hartford joined by our Legislative Delegation to get the necessary funding to provide our children with a quality education.
2. A Meeting of citizens with Congressman Himes, Senator Blumenthal and Senator Lieberman to get their assistance in Washington. A delegation should be sent to Washington to meet with the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice about their discrimination of the Bridgeport children who are receiving unequal educational funding.
3. The preparation and establishment of a Legal Action Fund to finance a lawsuit against the State of Connecticut under the State and U.S. Constitution which guarantees an equal education for all children. The present Bridgeport situation returns America to before the landmark; Brown vs Board of Education Case of 1954.
4. Notification to all authorities that if Bridgeport’s Education System is not adequately funded, that a $1 Billion law suit will be filed charging Connecticut and the United States of America with discrimination, neglect of children and failure to provide an education as guaranteed by the Laws of our great nation.
It seems to me that unless we take aggressive action against those entities who seek to deny an education to our children, that Bridgeport will always be confronted with the problems we have today.
The time of our going up to Hartford and begging for money to teach our children has to stop. It is obvious that the best effort of our State Legislative Contingent and Mayor has been inadequate at best. It is time to play hardball. The lives and futures of three generations of Bridgeport children have already been destroyed by this inequity. Let this cry serve as a call to arms for our children. Who will join me in our battle?
Charles (Charlie) J. Coviello, Jr.
Candidate for Mayor, City of Bridgeport
charlie,
I love your passion to change the way things are done ONLY IN BRIDGEPORT, but I better like the short quote from a CT Post article last week, where somebody at the State level said Bridgeport’s solution lies in Bridgeport, or something to that effect.
Why are Barbara Bellinger as Chair and other members of the Board of Education not being criticized for failing to have a Plan B if the Plan A isn’t working? Why has this group not pushed for action on effecting all changes recommended by previous audit phases? And what stage are we at today for the final part of the audit? (State money + City money + BRBC money + ??? = Nothing final yet …)
Unfortunately the public does not have the info necessary to make general judgements about where things stand, other than those in power have not done their jobs this year to let things get to this point.
Look at the Op Ed in this week’s Independent regarding the 900 retirees covered by Pension A for whom the City budget is contributing $35,000 per beneficiary in the coming year. Our public school system with more than 20,000 youths to educate is receiving around $2,000 per year from local taxpayers towards operating expense. (Eighty percent comes from State of CT ECS funding, grants, etc.)
$35,000 per beneficiary for retiree pension funding, folks who have served the public well in past years compared to $2,000 local contribution by local taxpayers for local kids. Something is so out of control here. And it is not just throwing more money after the problem, because that has not worked here in the past. Leadership in the City and at the local BOE needs to get off their high horses, away from their PR people, and smell the changing temper of this time. Leadership is not being demonstrated in any quarter, and I for one do not see Federal legislators (who can’t vote on our public debt for instance) or State authorities who have their own fish to fry as being our answer.
Finch has had room in his budget not to freeze out the BOE, but he must have a different agenda. And Ramos has acted as if he was expecting a different scenario to be enacted. Wonder what words and from whom he was awaiting?
The BOE has rewarded Ramos, been internally conflicted without transparency, accountability or open process, and has not gotten their job done this year. Who will challenge those running? Perhaps there is an opportunity for each Mayoral candidate to promote two or three people who would be real advocates for citywide educational achievement in contrast to a job factory, as stated by Ben Barnes.
Wordy.
$35,000 per beneficiary from Bridgeport property tax dollars to Pension A retirees … and at the same time …
$2,000 per beneficiary from Bridgeport property tax dollars for students to develop their abilities, become useful to society and trade their days for dollars, paying taxes along the way while they provide needed and valuable services within a changing economy.
Still too wordy??? C’mon yahooy, what’s right about the way this has worked out? What does Mario have to say about the administrations that have created this “tragedy?” Words of wisdom to guide the elected at this time? Is the Wizard of Bridgeport tongue-tied at this time?
This year’s budget hearings were a pissing contest between Tom Sherwood, the BOE and Ramos.
The education budget was sent to the budget committee 24 hrs before they were to appear before the budget committee. No one could review that budget in such a short timeframe. Sherwood made it clear he was only going to budget the BOE the same monies he did the year before and he did not give a shit.
The BOE for their part acted in an arrogant manner, they also made no attempt to make necessary cuts. Sherwood and the BOE said in essence screw the kids.