Despite the efforts of protestors who’ve been calling for additional investments in the Hartford Public Schools, the City Council on Tuesday approved a $429 million school budget that critics say falls short by about $30 million. As projected during the budget process, hundreds of jobs will be cut as a result.
Parents say things aren’t so great in the city schools, and they’re about to get worse.
“The last thing our schools need at this point is cuts,” says Constanza Segovia, a Hartford school mom and a leader of an ongoing, organized protest effort. “We are hearing every day from students, parents and teachers who are in the classroom every day telling us all the ways they are not being supported.”
Chanting “fund our future,” about 30 protestors showed up at Hartford City Hall for a noon City Council session to finalize the city budget.
Some of the protestors left as the council spent more than two hours behind closed doors in executive session.
Almost 400 job cuts are expected for 2024-25, resulting in program cuts and larger class sizes.
Councilor Josh Michtom of the Working Families Party says the council could have laid off police and kept teachers, but chose not to. (There’s no indication laying off police was seriously considered.) Now, he says, the city must lobby the state for more funding in future years. The state recently found an additional $5 million to help Hartford close the budget gap, but Michtom believes state lawmakers are chronically underfunding city schools.
“This is the work of the next year, almost more than anything that we do,” Michtom told the council. “A constant agitation and harrowing and bothering and lobbying of the legislature to inject some measure of humanity into their approach to education funding in this state.”
Mayor Arunan Arulampalam commented on passage of the city’s overall $624 million budget: “I want to thank the Council President and leadership for their partnership and to celebrate the unanimous passage of our City’s budget for the next fiscal year. This budget reflects our commitment to making City Government responsive to the residents of Hartford and ensuring that all of our neighborhoods feel connected to our priorities and the services that we are delivering. On all the challenges we face, we have a united City and united leaders standing behind our residents working to make progress and find solutions.”