John Carlos Serana Musser sat on a noisy CTRail train among 80 of his peers from New Haven Public Schools on his way to the state Capitol early Wednesday morning.
While some students scrolled through Instagram with their headphones on or studied for upcoming tests, others read through the testimony they’d prepared to deliver to the Education Committee later that morning.
Between joking with friends and running down their schedule for the day, Musser, 18, also thought back to when he joined the soccer team at Wilbur Cross High School.
The field was terrible, he said, even sad.
There were only three wooden benches for parents to sit on, with enough room for roughly nine people — not including spots where nails stuck out. The field itself was a slope with “a bunch of mounds” and puddles, the 18-year-old said. When visiting teams came, there wasn’t a place for their players to sit, so that meant they had to sit on the grass on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, when his team traveled to neighboring schools in Madison or Milford, he saw bleachers with almost a dozen rows. Their fields even had a school logo.
“It was humiliating,” Musser said in an interview with The Connecticut Mirror, but it also opened his eyes to inequities among school districts across the state.
“It shouldn’t have to be a completely different reality 30 minutes away, and that compelled me to start asking questions,” Musser said. “If there’s money in the state and money in other towns, why is there no money in New Haven?”
The 80 students from New Haven were joined by dozens more from Hartford and New London at the Legislative Office Building on Wednesday to voice their support for Senate Bill 1511, a bill that would increase per-pupil funding in the state’s Education Cost Sharing Grant.
Since 2013, the state has determined it costs roughly $11,525 annually to educate a child, while providing extra funding for students who come from low-income backgrounds and those who are multilingual learners. Senate Bill 1511 proposes raising the “foundation” amount by over $960, to at least $12,488 per pupil, and also proposes a new added 50% weight for students with disabilities who receive special education services.
“We know that we have cities and towns that are really struggling to provide what young people need in our school systems, and the state does need to do more,” said Rep. Maryam Khan, D-Windsor, who’s a member of both the Education Committee and co-chair of the Special Education Select Committee.
If SB1511 is passed and signed into law as written, the ECS changes would cost Connecticut an additional $506.1 million in FY26 and an additional $516.2 million in FY27, according to estimates from the School and State Finance Project.
Dozens of students pleaded that it was needed.
“I personally faced a revolving door of substitute teachers, leading to disruptions in my education. Entire classes were left without consistent instruction, and as a result, I struggled academically. I failed courses, not because I lacked the ability, but because there was no stability in the classroom,” said New London High School Senior Jadelise Garrett at a student-led news conference just down the hall from the Education Committee’s public hearing. “Connecticut’s teacher retention crisis has only made matters worse. While the state boasts a record-setting $4.3 billion in its emergency budget reserve, New London schools are struggling to hire and retain qualified educators.”
“At 7:40 a.m. this morning, we left behind schools that struggle with mold in their facilities, leaky roofs, and that can’t keep teachers in their classrooms,” Musser said. “The conditions of our education are critical enough for us to miss a day of learning and demand change.”
Johanelyz Arroyo, a junior at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, also added that New Haven classrooms are full of outdated textbooks, overwhelmed teachers and “non-existent technology.”
“Why do some students have access to advanced equipment and courses while others are left to struggle in under-resourced schools?” Arroyo said. “We demand that our voices be heard in the halls of power where the decisions about our education are made. … We are fighting for the child who dreams of becoming a doctor, the artist who wants to share their vision with the world and the leader who will change our community for the better.”
In October 2023, Dalio Education, a grant foundation that engages with public school communities and provides funding to several nonprofits, released a report that said more than 119,000, or about 19%, of young people in Connecticut between the ages of 14 and 26 were “at risk” or “disconnected” in 2021-22.
Since then, the 119K Commission was created and tasked with producing “a comprehensive, bipartisan, pragmatic strategy” to address issues certain to require local, state and private sector actions. The commission’s final report called for increasing investment, accountability and transparency in broad swaths of government, including K-12 education, job training and mental health at an estimated cost of $900 million — $545 million of which would go toward education aid.
SB-1511 makes headway on the request, Connecticut Conference of Municipalities Executive Director Joe DeLong said, calling the bill “a vital framework that addresses the pressing needs of our disconnected youth.”
“We cannot expect our schools to thrive without ensuring they have the financial support to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of education,” DeLong wrote in his public testimony. “SB 1511 reflects what is going on in the classroom by laying the foundation for future success by introducing a weight to the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula specifically for students with disabilities, increasing weights for multilingual learners, and ensuring that districts with a high percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch are adequately funded.”
But the bill’s odds of becoming law might be long.
Gov. Ned Lamont and his administration have remained steadfast in their efforts to adhere to the state’s fiscal guardrails and $4.3 billion rainy day fund.
When the state legislature approved a $40 million emergency funding investment toward special education, Lamont vetoed the effort and said it was “just no way to do business.”
“I think it’s the wrong way to budget — buy it now, pay later,” he said earlier this month. “That’s just the type of budgeting that has got this state into the ditch over the last 20 years.”
Lamont ultimately signed a separate bill that approved the same funding to avoid his first override of a veto since he was elected in 2018, which makes lawmakers like Khan hopeful of further investment.
“The one very important thing that I think is necessary is to first make the case [to the governor and the rest of the state legislature],” Khan said. “I think the one thing that I had been hoping for, for a while here, is to have the backing and to have the support and I think there’s no better advocacy than coming right from our youth.”