Connecticut Local Politics

A guest post by Kim Hynes of Common Cause –GC
It’s good to be a politician in Connecticut. After all, elected officials get all kinds of perks: lavish dinners paid for by lobbyists, flights on corporate jets, free hot tubs, and allegedly, work on your kitchen counter and bathroom by a city contractor even [...]

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Early this morning, Genghis put up a post that mentioned Rep. Janowski’s proposal to increase ECS funding for towns that participate in the Open Choice program (currently, there is a perverse disincentive for for towns, in that increased participation lowers the amount of funding they receive per student from the state).
This is a good time [...]

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You probably saw this if you looked at October 2nd’s Courant, but the state board of education has approved new requirements for high schools. Here they are in a nutshell:

As proposed, the plan calls for increasing the number of required courses to 25, up from 20. It also lays out specific courses students must take [...]

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After the new Sheff settlement was announced in April, a group supporting the goals of the Sheff vs. O’Neill plaintiffs commissioned a UCONN poll to see whether Connecticut residents supported the ideas they were advancing. Some findings:
Connecticut residents strongly support the voluntary two-way integration programs that are the backbone of the Sheff v. O’Neill [...]

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In my “other” life (the one that actually provides me with $ and, get this, FAN MAIL from time to time) I write books for young people. One of my author colleagues, Jordan Sonnenblick, is a successful author of books for teens, and, until recently, a middle school language arts teacher.
Given the recent hoo [...]

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Yesterday the parties to the Sheff lawsuit announced their latest settlement accord and attempt to comply with the 1996 court decision to require the desegregation of Hartford public schools. This announcement is not the end, but the beginning of the process, as the legislature and the state judge assigned to this matter must still [...]

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And about time. The description of HB-5871 reads:
To require school boards and unions to bargain over the compensation, hours and duties of teachers who train and evaluate student teachers or serve as mentors and assessors of beginning teachers under the beginning educator support and training program (BEST), suspend the BEST program for the fiscal year [...]

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There’s a bill causing yet another dust-up over sex education percolating its way through the Capitol. Here’s what the bill would do:
The measure would authorize the state Department of Education to establish a grant program to pay for “medically accurate” health education for school districts that seek to participate. The state would provide $1 million [...]

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Ran across this today:
The state board of education today endorsed a high-school redesign proposal that would require students to pass end-of-course exams, complete an independent study, and take at least 24 credits in specific courses to earn a diploma.

The changes are still years from becoming reality, but the board’s approval clears the way for a [...]

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I’m not Eddie Perez’s biggest fan. That’s an understatement. But that doesn’t mean I can’t agree with him when he says this:
We should create a Hartford County School District that includes all 29 towns in the county.

This district should have as its core missions the management and creation of high-performing schools in every community and [...]

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Connecticut Voices for Children has compiled three reports based on census data which will probably be of interest to CTLP readers.

Connecticut and New York Lead the Nation in Income Inequality
Child Poverty in 2006: How Do Connecticut Cities Measure Up?
Education Cost Sharing (ECS) Grant Increases by District Reference Group

Enjoy.

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Hartford Superintendent Steven Adamowski is on the right track with Hartford schools. First he proposed the complete reorganization, including complete staffing and governance overhauls, for four of Hartford’s lowest-performing elementary schools. Now he is calling for two of the city’s large high schools to be broken into smaller, more manageable units, some of which would [...]

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According to a report released by the Connecticut Citizen Action Group CT taxpayers have spent $11.1 billion of the $456 billion in total funding for the Iraq war.
From the press release:

The report, titled “Getting U.S. Back on Track” and authored by the USAction Education Fund, illustrates, how CT’s cost of war could have provided health [...]

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Presidential candidate Chris Dodd, who earlier this week called for free community college tuition for all, has unveiled his proposals for overhauling our educational system:

Universal Pre-School: Guarantee that every 4-year-old child in this country will have access to high-quality pre-school.
High Standards for All: Develop and implement education standards that prepare all students for success in [...]

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The Department of Education has released data on the latest round of mastery tests, and here’s some standout facts:
Gains in most grades in mathematics and
writing performance statewide, as measured by the percentage of students scoring at or above the proficient and goal levels;
Modest declines overall in reading scores statewide (percentages at or above proficient and [...]

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The legislature won’t be voting Monday on an extension of the latest Sheff v. O’Neill settlement, which is intended to desegregate Hartford schools. The issue may be taken up in a future special session, or it may get kicked back to the courts.
So far, desegregation efforts concerning Hartford have been spectacular failures. As the article [...]

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The latest veto:
Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a bill today that would have extended favorable in-state college tuition rates at Connecticut colleges and universities to children of illegal immigrants.
Rell said that while she is sympathetic to the plight of the students, they are living in the U.S. illegally and she does not want to [...]

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This is pretty interesting stuff:
Hartford’s top school official will call today for a massive shake-up of the city’s troubled public education system by closing failing schools, breaking up large high schools and giving students a broad array of new choices.
School Superintendent Steven J. Adamowski’s plan would radically alter the 24,000-student system by creating choices such [...]

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Bill Curry has a perceptive column in the Courant today pointing out the apparent lack of progress on key issues like health care, property tax reform, education and energy from the 2007 session. A key point:
The core problem in education funding is the property tax. It deprives thousands of children of a basic right even [...]

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Democrat Joe Courtney, who defeated three term Republican incumbent Rob Simmons by a razor-thin 91 votes in November, was back in Connecticut for the Easter recess after a busy start to the session down in Washington. Courtney and I sat down at his new Enfield office (for more on that office, including a picture of [...]

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