Evaluating the fiscal crisis that’s leading to major job cuts at the Hartford Public Schools, Carol Gale, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, says she’s hoping city and state officials understand the importance of coming through with funds to cover the system’s estimated $27 million budget deficit for the 2024-25 school year.
“Our city depends on a quality educational program,” says Gale. “How you can ignore that, I don’t understand.”
She came to the state Capitol on Wednesday afternoon to support school parents rallying for the funds.
It was last week that the Board of Education adopted a $429 million budget for 2024-25—a budget that requires the elimination of 384 teaching and staff positions.
Parents like Constanza Segovia say the job cuts are unacceptable. They’re calling on the city and/or the state to come up with the funding to prevent the cuts-- and the program reductions and larger class sizes that will result.
“They need to find more money in the city budget for our schools—our schools have been flat-funded for ten years—and, more importantly, we need real investment from the state.”
Saying the money will not be coming from the city, Hartford City Councilor Josh Michtom (Working Families Party) looks for action from state lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamont. He says, “Short term, the hope is that some of this pressure is heard in the legislature and they free up some more funds for us, because the size of this deficit is really beyond what we can do within the Hartford budget. We just don’t have the money.”
In a statement, Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said, “Public education is deeply important to me, and Hartford is not alone in facing challenges brought on by sunsetting federal funds and rising employment costs.
We’ve been coordinating with the Superintendent, HPS officials and our City Council to identify a path forward for our school system to adapt and meet the needs of our students while preserving the City’s ability to provide services without raising taxes.”
The issue will be addressed again Thursday night, as Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez presents her budget to the city.