Next fiscal year, every New Haven school will receive a small amount of additional money from the district based on the number of students receiving special education or multilingual learning services — as the city presses the state to make a similar commitment in its own school-funding formula. The local school-by-school budget bump might mean an extra $20,214 in discretionary funds for Wilbur Cross, said New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) CFO Amilcar Hernandez at a community budget meeting hosted at the East Rock high school on Wednesday evening. About 20 attendees gathered inside the Wilbur Cross auditorium, including school principal Matt Brown, a group of NHPS administrators, several parents, and two current Cross students. The meeting was one of six school budget input sessions that Supt. Madeline Negrón and CFO Hernandez are convening as part of an effort to increase transparency and communication about school finances in the runup to putting together a new budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Over the course of the meeting, Negrón and Hernandez made the case that the state’s school funding allocation is far from sufficient. The complex formula allots school funding to each town, accounting for a range of factors from the concentration of low-income students in a district to town residents’ median income. As of the current fiscal year, the state issues a total of $170,824,330 to NHPS via the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, or $10,085 per student, according to the School + State Finance Project. Hernandez pointed out that while this school year marks the first year that the state’s ECS formula has been fully funded to its originally projected amount, the formula has not adjusted for inflation since 2013. “Nothing costs the same as it cost in 2013!” said Hernandez, echoing an argument made by Mayor Justin Elicker his State of the City address this week. The formula currently estimates the cost of education a student who does not need additional services to be $11,525 per school year. That’s hardly more than half of what NHPS actually spends per student: $21,371, according to the School + State Finance Project. Hernandez argued that inflation alone should increase the baseline per-pupil cost to about $16,000. In addition to advocating for the formula to account for a higher cost of educating students, NHPS leaders are advocating for the formula to allot additional funding based on the number of special education students in each district. To mirror that advocacy, Hernandez announced that he plans to slightly increase the amount of discretionary funding that the district assigns to each school, distributed based on the number of multilingual learners and special education students in each of those schools. (The ECS formula does currently account for English language learners.) Amilcar Hernandez: “Nothing costs the same as it cost in 2013!” Hernandez said after the meeting that he currently projects distributing about $200,000 across New Haven’s 44 schools as an additional multilingual learner and special education allocation. He said that he is still working out exactly where that funding will come from as the school system finalizes its proposal this month. “It’s a very small amount,” said Negrón. Current projections suggest that NHPS would provide an additional $20,214 for Wilbur Cross, the city’s largest school, through this funding pool. While the amount of additional funding per school itself may not be substantial, Hernandez said that the purpose of this proposal is symbolic. “We are doing what we are asking the state to do,” he said. Gov. Ned Lamont revealed his own state budget proposal Wednesday morning for the coming fiscal year — which, if adopted, would result in no changes to the ECS formula and no systemic funding increases to NHPS. Negrón said that while she is hopeful that state legislators will take up the issue of ECS reform this legislative session, “I also read the governor’s draft. Not as optimistic.” Still, she said, “maybe there’s enough momentum to raise our voices” and convince state leaders. “Showing Kids They Matter” Daniel Lanpher, June Lanpher, and Melissa McGrath. After the meeting, Wilbur Cross senior June Lanpher reflected that school funding is “so much more complicated than I thought it was.” Lanpher attended the meeting with her parents, taking notes for a research project she’s undertaking about how school finances are impacting teachers. “I find it astonishing,” said her dad, Daniel Lanpher, “that the state allocates based on a 2013 formula.” He argued that the state should use money from its multi-billion-dollar “rainy day fund” to increase funding for schools. “When you invest in education, you get it all back,” echoed her mom, Melissa McGrath. At the meeting, the family learned that Wilbur Cross’s current budget amounts to $15,783,799 for a school of about 1,500 students. Next year, the school’s projected budget — a preliminary estimate, at least — is $16,439,099. That projected increase assumes no changes to staffing or school programming, and accounts primarily for salary raises. Lanpher said she sees the impacts of underfunding on a daily basis. “The bathrooms are a little run down,” she said; one time, she saw “a toilet detached from the wall.” (The money for school building repairs — like bathroom fixes — comes from an entirely separate capital budget, which consists of about $15 million in bonds.) Lanpher also recalled how a school theater competition revealed how other schools had far more resources for costumes and set design materials compared to Cross. More funding could help teachers obtain the supplies they need for their classrooms, Lanpher added. “Each teacher has a wish list.” All in all, more funding for schools would be a way of “showing kids they matter,” she said. Attendees included members of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Association. The post School-By-School Funding To Mirror State Pitch appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less