Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, said in his State of the State address Wednesday that he will propose in his budget this year to dramatically adjust the way the state distributes more than $4 billion of state aid.
A superior court judge said in a sharply worded ruling in September that the state’s funding formula leaves its states poor, black, and Latino children locked in underfunded schools and placed in front of unqualified teachers. The state has appealed, and the state’s supreme court is expected to hear the case later this year .
But in his address, Malloy conceded that the state’s funding formula is unfair and said he will propose in the coming weeks to more equitably distribute money between the state’s wealthy and poor districts.
“While we have made progress on this front in recent years, I still believe we have not gone far enough,” Malloy said. “Connecticut needs a new way to calculate state aid—one that guarantees equal access to a quality education regardless of ZIP code. ... We need a formula that appropriately measures a given community’s burden. A formula that recognizes specific challenges faced by local property taxpayers. And a formula that takes into account the impact those challenges have on the education provided to our children.”
Read the entire speech here.