Leaders of Connecticut’s public education systems didn’t see everything they’d been hoping for in Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed biennial budget, presented at the Capitol Wednesday.

The governor’s budget, which kicks off four months of anticipated debate with lawmakers over the state’s fiscal priorities, included some increases in general operating grants and special education for K-12 schools — though not as much as educators and advocates were seeking.

And it left the state’s higher education institutions, the University of Connecticut and Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, bracing for cutbacks as emergency federal COVID-19 grants legislators have used to keep them afloat since 2021 are about to evaporate.

Lamont’s delivered a long-anticipated challenge to public colleges and universities, asking them to absorb the loss of more than $200 million in expiring federal pandemic funding.

“The importance of higher ed does not exempt our universities from making sure that taxpayers and students are getting the best value,” the governor said in his budget address to the General Assembly Wednesday. “They should not be immune to reform.”

At first glance, CSCU — which includes four regional universities, the community colleges and the online Charter Oak State College — and the University of Connecticut didn’t see their funding levels significantly change in the governor’s new two-year plan.

UConn’s Storrs and satellite campuses would get $235 million next fiscal year and $240 million in 2026-27, down slightly from the $245 million in traditional state funding. And its Farmington-based health center would get $123 million and $127 million in the new budget, also down slightly from the $134 million it received this fiscal year.

But there’s a huge qualifier.

When asked by UConn officials for help with operating costs last spring, legislators and the governor also gave Connecticut’s flagship university almost $130 million in soon-to-expire federal funding — specifically one of the final shares of the $2.8 billion Congress granted Connecticut in 2021 through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Similarly, the governor proposed $472 million for the CSCU system next fiscal year and $485 million in 2026-27. Both proposals are close to the $479 million in traditional funds the system got this fiscal year.

But CSCU also was given nearly $140 million in federal ARPA dollars, which state officials knew largely would be used to cover recurring operating costs. 

Without that federal aid, both UConn and CSCU officials will be forced to draw down reserves and look to cut spending, unless they can convince legislators to pony up more state funds than Lamont would.

[How does Connecticut pass its budget? We’ve outlined it here]

Lamont particularly focused on CSCU in his budget address, saying the system “must reimagine how we train our workforce for 21st century jobs. Their student population is down 30%, most students don’t graduate, and costs keep escalating.” The governor had suggestions: “The university boards and leadership should be drilling down on the mix of courses, size of lectures, and teaching load.”

A December audit of expenses and credit card use by CSCU leadership revealed considerable misspending of thousands of dollars on food, entertainment and transportation.

The CSCU administration said Wednesday it would continue working internally and with legislators to bolster its fiscal position.

“There is no better investment that Connecticut can make than in the future of its students,” CSCU Spokesperson Samantha Norton said. “With the proper level of support and funding, we can ensure that our colleges and universities continue to offer our students a high quality, affordable education that transforms their lives and sets them up for success.”

Reka Wrynn, UConn’s associate vice president for budget, planning, and institutional research, has said the university also is seeking to curb spending where possible.

“We’re trying to do our part and find efficiency savings wherever we can to reduce that reliance upon the state,” Wrynn said in an interview with The Connecticut Mirror in December. But, she acknowledged, “We can’t do it all in one year.” 

A spokesperson from the university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lamont’s budget Wednesday.

Lorien Touponce, a senior at UConn and the undergraduate student body president, said she hopes Lamont “recognizes how important students are to the growth of our state, to our economy.”

“UConn students are going to be important and they need to be considered,” Touponce said. “We will live all over the state and we will become your constituents and our interests need to be considered.”

A boost for K-12 districts

For the state’s K-12 schools, the governor’s budget offered a boost but didn’t quite meet the mark.

A $54 million investment in special education, announced earlier this week, was allocated in the second year of the governor’s biennial budget. It would include a $40 million increase to the Excess Cost Grant, which is the state’s reimbursement model to districts for high special education costs, and a $14 million grant program to help districts develop ways to educate more students with disabilities in-district — rather than sending them to private programs in other communities.

But districts had called for about $90 million more from the state to cover growing costs — funding many say can’t wait.

When asked what districts might do about special education costs in the coming fiscal year, Jeffrey Beckham, the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management said they should “plan on what they were expecting based on current services.”

“There’ll be no changes in the first year,” Beckham confirmed.

Patrice McCarthy, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said the second-year funding will help, but “now that the budget is in the legislature’s hands we will be bringing the voices of Connecticut’s public boards of education to the Capitol to fully fund the special education excess cost grant.”

Some education stakeholders said Lamont also ignored several proposals from the Task Force to Study Special Education Services and Funding, a 14-member group convened by statute in 2021 that delivered its final recommendations last month.

In the report, the task force called for the state to add a “50% weight based on the number of eligible special education students in the district” to the Education Cost Sharing grant, which already provides weighted funding to districts with large populations of multilingual learners and students from low-income households. It also proposed a fund to pay tuition for special education certifications, which could incentivize more people to become special education educators.

“The added money is far too little and it is far too late, because it fails to deal with the current shortfall which is wreaking havoc with school budgets,” said Andrew Feinstein, who served as one of three chairs on the task force.

Education Committee Co-Chair Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield, said lawmakers “will continue to discuss” the task force’s recommendations as “a mechanism to get districts the funds they need up front to hire the staff and create the programming to meet students’ needs.”

As for general education funding, the state’s $2.3 billion Education Cost Sharing program — the single-largest operating grant to K-12 school districts — would continue to follow a previously authorized schedule of increases, rising by more than $157 million in the first year of the new biennium and by another $11 million in the second. 

Sen. Eric Berthel, a ranking member on the Education Committee, criticized Lamont’s budget. “Investment in K-12? What investment?” he said.

“Also, Governor Lamont should not claim full credit for the [Education Cost Share] increase as the formula itself was implemented before he took office, while the phase-in was hastened during his tenure,” Berthel said.

Cities and towns are expected to welcome the additional aid, but advocacy groups, including the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, noted that state funding hasn’t kept pace with inflation for years.

For example, CCM estimates that ECS grants alone would have had to provide an extra $654 million since 2017 just to keep up with inflation.

“[Lamont’s] proposal must be a starting point — not the final solution,” said Kate Dias, the president of the Connecticut Education Association. “Without immediate action, more students will lose critical services, more classrooms will go without teachers, and our education system will continue to struggle.”

In several news conferences since last fall, CCM and other education leaders have called for a $545 million funding boost on top of the state’s existing ECS investment. The figure was drawn from an October report put out by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which offered recommendations for reengaging students who have lost touch with the education system.

Of the $545 million, nearly half would land in the state’s five largest school districts — New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Waterbury and Stamford. The superintendents and mayors in those cities said the investment was needed, as they educate the largest numbers of high-need students across the state, which include students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, are multilingual learners, have a disability or are experiencing homelessness.

Dias called on state lawmakers to “build on [Lamont’s] proposal with bold immediate action.”