Public Hearing On School Budget

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?

I double down on those comments. Take note children, when cities, governments, careers are not representative of the communities they serve it is indeed at least 90 % because of institutional racism and needs to be called out. The largest black and brown city having been run by white males for almost ever having an underfunded education system, forever is no coincidence.

It’s time for the city to vote for a mayor that looks like them and has lived a life like them.

Side note: not all republicans are color blind some of us see color and see the unfairness being heaped upon the people of color in our city. This Republican also happens to be a member of the Working Families Party.

How’s your organizing efforts going by the way?

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.

It is people perpetuating the misdirection put forth by our municipal leaders to escape responsibility for underfunding our schools that are the issue. Don’t take my word for it use primary source data https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Register-Manual/Section-VII/Municipal-Grand-List

As far as holding the state responsible for their share I have and I do through public testimony calling out disparities in funding, attempts to hijack public dollars for charter school organizations, and bringing awareness to the community in forms of forums.

Only an in effective advocate addresses these issues all at once. We are on local budget so we must hold local officials accountable to local dollars , to allow the city to divert attention to the state in order to shirk their responsibilities (and Vice versa)

It is exactly people like me that call out the biases, that can go behind the numbers and not be baffled by BS false narratives, that attempts to break the intentional misdirection in the budget to plain English.

Kindly when you speak of education funding and grandlist please argue from a place of actual knowledge. If the other aforementioned district can fund their schools on smaller grand lists so can we!

EQUITY NOW