When Bridgeport town and school officials pled their case with state education committee co-chair Senator Thomas Gaffey at a local meeting Tuesday night, they may have heard the answer they were expecting, but I doubt it was the one they wanted.  See story. Faced with a requested 6.9% ($14.3 million) education budget increase for 2008-09, grant reductions, and a new mandate, Bridgeport officials reached out to the long time education leader. They were reportedly told in return not to expect more than what’s already authorized in the state budget for 2008-09, the second year of the state biennium.

Bridgeport BOE’s 6.9% requested hike is not much higher than the average numbers coming out of school boards across the state—6.2% - 6.5 based on about 60 districts I have numbers for.

Loss of the state reading grant and pressure on the state early childhood program funding create one set of problems. A new mandate to handle virtually all suspensions in school can only add to costs. And Bridgeport’s ECS funding, which grew by $10.2 million in 2007-08, is slated to increase less next year — $6.9 million, more than three million less than the previous year. Not all that amount is statutorily earmarked for the education budget, under state rules for Minimum Budget Requirements (MBR). MBR allows towns to take tax relief with some of their ECS increases—about 20% in Bridgeport’s case. But even if all $6.9 million gets to the BOE, it will be far short of the request.

Bridgeport’s target ECS aid under the new formula is $195 million, $31 million more than the $164 million in the state appropriation for fiscal 09. Statewide, ECS will only be 26% phased in toward target aid after fiscal 09, a pace that would not achieve full phase-in before 2015. Even if that happens, the formula foundation level will be 8 years old and out of touch. See Feb 12 blog. It stills seems to me that the best way to get tax relief to towns is to accelerate the phase in of ECS—not take 8 years. That additional revenue will allow towns to address their growing education burden without overtaxing the property of their residents.