As Gov. Ned Lamont announced his intention to run again, I sat in on a pep rally celebrating how resilient our children and staff are in the face of adversity. They should not have to be. Lamont loves to espouse Connecticut’s high ranking when it comes to education, but beneath the surface lies a great inequity between those with wealth and power and those without. There is a wide gap between what wealthy, predominantly White districts spend on their students and what urban, high-minority districts can afford. This divide is not just about dollars—it’s about opportunity, and it’s rooted in decades of institutional racism embedded in Connecticut’s history that continues even today.
Let’s compare the two Connecticuts using two wealthy districts and two struggling districts using data from the 2023-2024 school year culled from https://public-edsight.ct.gov/
Greenwich and Westport are two of the state’s wealthiest school districts Greenwich spends $27,093 per pupil, with a student population that is 59.4% White and an ELL population under 6% with the following resources to draw from:
- Grand List: $34.8 billion
- Mill Rate: 11.39
- Property Tax Revenue: $396 million
Westport spends $25,576 per pupil, with a student population of 75.9% White enrollment and an ELL population of just over 1% with the following resources to draw from:
- Grand List: $11.47 billion
- Mill Rate: 18.35
- Property Tax Revenue: $210 million
Compare that with my city, Bridgeport, and the city of Waterbury:
Bridgeport spends $18,565 per pupil, serving a population that is 59.3% Hispanic, 29.1% Black, and an ELL population of 28.3% with the following resources to draw from:
- Grand List: $7.3 billion
- Mill Rate: 43.45
- Property Tax Revenue: $315 million
Waterbury spends $18,405 per pupil, serving a demographic of 61.6% Hispanic, 21.2% Black, and an ELL population of 19.8% with the following resources to draw from:
- Grand List: $6.6 billion
- Mill Rate: 55.5
- Property Tax Revenue: $365 million
Even with these exorbitant mill rates, Bridgeport and Waterbury cannot match the revenue of Greenwich or Westport. Property wealth and race, determines school funding and student outcomes. Connecticut’s reliance on local property taxes for school funding began more than a century ago. While state aid was introduced to equalize resources, it has never fully closed the gap.
In Horton v. Meskill (1977), the Connecticut Supreme Court declared the system unconstitutional for failing to provide equal educational opportunity. The ruling led to the creation of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula in the 1980s, designed to direct more funds to high-need districts.
But after decades of deliberate underfunding of the formula, Connecticut is finally fully funding the now outdated and flawed formula. Political compromises and backdoor deals by legislatures and governors from affluent districts have left the formula in need of a total overhaul. Wealthy towns continue to outspend urban districts by thousands per pupil, reinforcing racial and economic segregation, through overly restrictive zoning laws.
Connecticut ranks among the most unequal states in school funding, a fact you will never hear Lamont mention. The gap between the Governor’s hometown of Greenwich and my beloved Bridgeport is not an accident, it is the predictable outcome of an institutionally racist system, a system that ties educational opportunity to property wealth. A system that is purposely designed to segregate the haves and have nots.
The link between race and funding gaps
The correlation is undeniable:
- Districts with 60%+ White students often spend $24,000–$30,000 per pupil.
- Districts with majority minority populations rarely exceed $22,000 per pupil.
This isn’t just a funding gap, it’s an equity gap, a gap that perpetuates the cycles of poverty and segregation. Students in Bridgeport and Waterbury start at a disadvantage and have to play catch up their whole lives because they have fewer advanced courses, fewer extracurricular opportunities, and fewer pathways to college success.
Funding translates into increased chances for success. It determines whether access to AP classes, a laptop, bus transportation, librarians and classrooms that are not overcrowded . When school funding based on property wealth, educational outcomes become a reflection of zip code not potential. This results in a two-tiered system one for Lamont’s Greenwich and one for my beloved Bridgeport.
It’s about the kids
This is about more than numbers these are real students. In Greenwich, a high school student can choose from dozens of AP courses, participate in robotics competitions, and learn in state-of-the-art science labs. In Bridgeport, students lack librarians and support staff to meet their needs an are forced to attend classes in buildings that need major repairs.
For many this disparity affects college readiness, career opportunities, and lifetime earnings. This is not just an education issue, it’s an economic and social justice issue.
Closing these gaps requires bold action:
- Revise the state funding formula to give greater weight to poverty and English learners and add a weight for Special Education students and tie increases to a minimum of an increased CPI.
- Invest strategically in technology, early childhood education, and teacher recruitment for high-need districts.
- Increase transparency by requiring annual reporting on funding equity and student outcomes.
The time for action is now
Educational equity is a civil rights issue, a right that has been violated in Connecticut since its very inception. An inequity that is supported by the Governor’s refusal to drop the guardrails while watching inner city after inner city make draconian cuts to the classroom. I call on all advocacy groups to come together and sue the state of Connecticut, and Ned Lamont, for violating the civil rights of our most vulnerable population. Let’s get ready for the upcoming session to advocate for funding an increase for Bridgeport (and other cities, advocates contact their local BOE for district specific needs) of at least $30 million enough to perhaps forestall further cuts to an already decimated system. If Ned Lamont refuses to propose such an increase, I call on the voters in all alliance districts to VOTE NED OUT! We may not have the votes to affect the legislature but we cities have the power to unite in a primary and send NED packing.
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Joseph Sokolovic is a member of the Bridgeport Board of Education and was recently reelected with the endorsement of the Independent Party and the Working Families Party