ERS partnered with the Connecticut Council for Education Reform (CCER) to provide a school system funding analysis for three districts: Bridgeport, Hamden, and Windham.
ERS has developed a special relationship with CCER, an organization that works to close the achievement gap and raise academic outcomes for all students in Connecticut. This special project follows our work with Waterbury Public Schools in 2013, and involves a joint effort between the two organizations: CCER was the primary point of contact for districts and performed the analysis, while ERS provided guidance in the form of technical assistance and insight on findings. Together, Bridgeport, Hamden, and Windham serve 29,000 students, many of them low-income.
With support from ERS, CCER performed a detailed analysis of funding and resource use in each of the three districts, similar to a simplified version of our Strategic Resource Map projects.
The funding analysis led to a set of recommendations for each district that included:
Bridgeport:
Hamden
Windham
CCER plans to use the insights gained from this project to inform the ongoing conversation on Connecticut’s state funding formula. According to Katie Roy, CCER's former chief operating officer, “Connecticut’s state funding formula is broken. It’s unfair…some schools have what they need to educate kids, and others don't have textbooks for every child.” Through its advocacy work, and together with the newly created Connecticut School Finance Project, CCER will use this work to help the state and interested stakeholders understand how resources are used at the district level so they can create an effective and fair state funding formula.
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