Lamont “Tone Deaf” To Education Funding

From a previous post:

Joseph Sokolovic says:
April 27, 2023 at 9:35 pm
My public testimony, and more!
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Joseph Sokolovic. I am the finance chair of Bridgeport Board of education, speaking on behalf of more than 19,000 students and 2,500 staff. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening. It was an opportunity that was not provided to any board member during the board of ed presentation on Tuesday. This is the third consecutive year that the budgets and appropriations committee has refused to allow board members to speak. I guess they like operating in an echo chamber of misinformation, and misdirection.
Tuesday’s budget and appropriations committee was the worst example of smoke and mirrors I have seen in the last decade. The finance director purposefully conflated the operating budget funds provided by the city of Bridgeport with the State grant funds and bonding for city owned buildings. This is troublesome, as the state delegation has stated repeatedly, that the state is less likely to fund Bridgeport because Bridgeport refuses to fund itself. Bridgeport, of the 169 municipalities funds its schools at the lowest, or second lowest, on a per pupil basis in the entire state! The State however, gives Bridgeport the second largest dollar amount of the 169 municipalities. The state is not going to save us. To be clear Bridgeport only provided 73 million local tax dollars, while the city of Waterbury provided 106 million local tax dollars to education in the last budget. Waterbury received far less from the state.
Also, in the response to Ms. Seigel’s presentation, the city budget director claimed that the cost of controlling traffic on city streets is a contribution to education. Traffic control is not education, it is a city responsibility. Another attempted sleight of hand was the attempt by Ganim’s budget director was to include interest payments on city owned property as education. That’s like a landlord telling their tenants that he has helped them afford their groceries this year because he paid the mortgage interest on the house or building he owns that you’re living in. Lastly in an outright misstatement of facts, it was asserted that the accumulated savings, or rainy day fund, in the education department was owned and controlled by the city. I don’t doubt that Ganim’s budget directors are acting on his orders to purposefully mislead you into thinking we cant afford more than 2 million for education, when the public safety, facilities and general budget is receiving 2 to 3 times more of an increase than education.
This the is the 8th consecutive year that Mayor Ganim, and the city council, have shortchanged education. The first four years they basically flat funded our children, and the next four years they missed the target by millions of dollars. Since Ganim took office, there has been over 243 jobs cut from education and at least another 117 slated to end at the beginning of the 24/25 school year when ESSER (covid) funds run out. That number does not include coming cuts in the operating budget due to a structural deficit.
Bridgeport’s children cannot afford four more years of joe Ganim. We’ve got choices for Mayor and city council, some of which have attended Board of Ed finance forum now and in the past we need to vote out Mayor Ganim and maybe the entire city council as well if they do not add the dollars we need to the education budget.
Added after public speaking for OIB
I am not sure yet who I am supporting, I have yet to hear a solid education funding plan out of any candidate. It would be foolish for any contender not to come out strong for education funding as in the last primary, it was administrations neglect of our schools that made it close, even with all the misteps in that race. Ganim himself even acknowledged his weakness on education at a narrow primary victory celebration.
So Bridgeport what will you do this primary? Will you once again vote for the white male who has been underfunding our black and brown students or will you choose from amongst the three candidates of color that never betrayed the city?
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Jeff Kohut says:
April 28, 2023 at 5:17 pm

“…The state is not going to save us. To be clear Bridgeport only provided 73 million local tax dollars, while the city of Waterbury provided 106 million local tax dollars to education in the last budget. Waterbury received far less from the state….”

Joe: Isn’t there something in the Connecticut state constitution that indicates a state responsibility for providing every Connecticut child with a suitable, adequate education? (E.g., Sheff vs. O’Neill; the Moukawsher Decision). This would seem to indicate that the onus is on the state for maintaining educational standards and funding across all municipalities — even Bridgeport…
Bridgeport’s miniscule, shrinking grand list, consisting increasingly of working-class, residential taxpayers, is incapable of dealing with the huge demands placed on our services and infrastructure by our residents, businesses, and the parasitic suburban entities (Trumbull, et al) (+ SHU) that get a free ride on our services and infrastructure even as they siphon away Bridgeport tax base and divert potential tax base to themselves and away from us… Waterbury, et al., are not stressed to nearly the same extent in these regards.

Sympathy lies with the school-aged children of Bridgeport, but Bridgeport reality indicates that our city can’t meet their needs… We can’t even adequately staff our PD and maintain traffic safety on our streets, or peace and safety for residents in our parks. Your efforts should be directed toward Harford, and possibly DC, not toward our failing, mismanaged, rudderless, leaderless city and its beleaguered residential taxpayers…

In regard to our city’s leadership deficiencies, while, indeed, it would be appropriate to have elected leadership representative of our racial and ethnic composition, it certainly isn’t inappropriate for our people to select leadership from among our minority white population in the context of our democratic processes. Indeed, aren’t you a white man elected to lead the city’s school system, which consists of about 75% students of color?… Truly, it is bad policy and form — ultimately harmful and inappropriate — to include race, in and of itself, as a leadership problem — or requirement. We don’t need divisive voices speaking inappropriately about vital city issues, such as education, in a racially-inflammatory context…

With appropriate minority representation (albeit, sans Hispanic representation) comprising the current field of Bridgeport mayoral candidates, we should look to a (carefully scrutinized, with outside oversight) democratic process to select our next mayor.

In addition, Bridgeporters that would envision a revitalized Bridgeport must be made fully conscious of the state and federal neglect and abuse of Bridgeport — in terms of their shortcomings in providing appropriate/adequate financial aid to the state’s largest city even as they sanction and promote exploitation and abuse of our municipality and its residents by “the region.”
Our schools will never improve with a BOE president that apparently has no insight into the full political realities that have rendered his school district grossly underfunded and dysfunctional.

Your first call Monday morning should be to the Governor’s Office, Joe; the second call should be to Congressman Himes. Then, you might sit down and seriously consider how you might best serve as an agent of positive change for your school system and city…

Follow-up post:
Joe: You said in your rebuttal “…One I am not board president. Two you are regurgitating some urban legend pushed by countless administrations that it is our weak grand list that prevents investment in education. This is simply not factual. Bridgeports net grand list (total taxable property) is equal to or higher than New Haven, Hartford, and Waterbury, yet they contribute more per pupil than Bridgeport. In fact Waterbury grand list is about 1.5 billion less than Bridgeport yet Waterbury gives over 30 million dollars more from the local tax base.l: ”

OK. You are not the BOE Chair/President — I should have known better. But, to the more important points(s); by your own grand list information on Waterbury, that city, with 40,000 fewer people than Bridgeport, has a per capita grand list value that exceeds that of Bridgeport by about $6,000… The further inference that can be made here is that their per capita stresses on their budget are smaller (e.g., police and fire) even as their per-capita taxable value, per citizen, is higher — so, of course they can kick in more for their schools! As for New Haven and Hartford — they have Yale and the Capitol benefit, respectively, lifting their municipal financial wherewithal… So, in this regard, you are not using a suitable comparison(s) to Bridgeport. Bridgeport is quite unique in its financial and socioeconomic circumstances.

But the most distressing thing about your commentary and rebuttal is that you don’t seem to know enough Bridgeport or its position in the political pecking order of the region/State of Connecticut to appreciate paragraph 3 of my statement: “Bridgeport’s miniscule, shrinking grand list, consisting increasingly of working-class, residential taxpayers, is incapable of dealing with the huge demands placed on our services and infrastructure by our residents, businesses, and the parasitic suburban entities (Trumbull, et al) (+ SHU) that get a free ride on our services and infrastructure even as they siphon away Bridgeport tax base and divert potential tax base to themselves and away from us… Waterbury, et al., are not stressed to nearly the same extent in these regards.”

How long have you lived in Bridgeport, Joe?