The Hartford Board of Education has voted to approve additional cuts of nearly $7 million to school staffing, programs and resources for students and families for the 2025-2026 school year budget.
In order to address a $30 million deficit, the board had previously proposed a budget that included a total of $15.3 million in cuts to staff and services, a $3 million allocation from the City and a projected $5 million infusion from state funding.
That left the deficit at $6.7 million. To address it, the Board of Education faced a decision: ask for more funding or continue to make additional cuts. It decided to do both.
In a meeting Tuesday night, board members debated for over two hours whether or not to send the unbalanced budget to the City of Hartford. In doing so, the board would have requested to reallocate funds within the city budget to provide more funding to the schools. It would have been a first for the board in 10 years.
With a six to three vote, the board instead decided to balance the budget with the $6.7 million in cuts required to cover the deficit hole. The board also voted for a resolution to still ask the city for additional funding.
Hartford Board of Education member Shontá Browdy voted “absolutely not” to the balanced budget and walked out before voting to approve the added resolution to ask for more funding. During the debate, she dismissed the move to do both as “Hartford politics,” to which some members of the public in the audience applauded.
“Every year the board cuts services our children need to pass a budget,” Browdy said. “We have already cut to the bone. Now we are cutting through it.”
Browdy said essential programs and resources will be hit hard with the additional cuts.
“We would have to do without a lot of our programs that keep kids on track, getting kids back on track and then educating our over-age under-credited [students],” Browdy said.
According to the FY 2025-2026 proposed budget presented to the board at their meeting Tuesday, several programs that help students graduate and find success after school would potentially be cut to cover the deficit.
Browdy said there would also be losses to staffing, including assistant principals and office staff members.
A strain on the school system
Daly Garay is a secretary for Hartford Public Schools. She works with an office assistant. Even with that assistance, Garay said she struggles to manage.
“I get 10 minutes of lunch at times,” Garay said.
The loss of office assistants would put more strain on executive assistants within the system, Garay said, negatively impacting the school system as a whole.
“I'm considering leaving because of the fact that I can't do both jobs, and I'm pretty sure that there's other execs that are also considering that it's just impossible for us to complete the tasks that they're asking us to complete,” Garay said. “We need money. We need funds. We need them to keep our staff.”
Iliana Rodriguez is an office assistant at Burns Latino Studies Academy. She is a former student of the Hartford Public School system, and now her son is in the school system as a preschooler.
Rodriguez wants to see the Board of Education and the City to focus on getting the funding needed to provide better education for students.
“Because how is it that you get to fifth grade and you're still on the third grade reading level? How?” Rodriguez said.
Concerns about the quality of education in the city drew national attention, after a recent Hartford Public High School graduate filed a lawsuit against the Hartford Board of Education and the City last year. The former student claimed the school system failed her after she managed to graduate while still being illiterate.
“Focus on what you have to focus on, which is on the kids,” Rodriguez said. “Get the money. Focus on the kids.”
Seeking city and state help
The Trump Administration’s move to defund the Department of Education has been a contributing factor in the conversations around the budget, according to Hartford Board of Education member Cristher Estrada-Perez.
“We don't know what's actually coming down the pipeline,” Estrada-Perez said. “There's a good chunk of dollars that are federal dollars that we don't know if we're going to have access to all of it.”
Estrada-Perez was one of the three members who supported the move to ask the city for more funding, because for her, the increased allocation is long overdue.
Last year, the state and the city announced $10.5 million in additional funding for Hartford’s schools, but Estrada-Perez said more is still needed to address the issues that the school systems are facing due to years of stagnant funding for schools.
“That reality of flat funding hasn't gone away,” Estrada-Perez said.“The impacts that people are experiencing haven't gone away.. So I think there was a desire from me to learn what levers of power we actually have at our disposal.”
Given the deficit that needs to be addressed and the federal cuts, Estrada-Perez said an infusion of state and city funding would be ideal. Hartford isn’t alone in that regard. In January, officials from Hartford Public Schools joined those from Bridgeport, Stamford, New Haven and Waterbury in asking for a statewide increase of $545 million in education cost sharing (ECS) funding.
“Sometimes the conversation is the state or the city, and I actually think the conversation is bigger than that is the state and the city,” she said. “It will require a commitment from both.”
A spokesperson for Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam released a statement reacting to the budget approval.
“The City of Hartford remains committed to prioritizing education and ensuring our students and teachers have the resources they need to succeed,” the statement said. “That commitment includes the additional $3 million in funding for the Hartford Board of Education announced in March, continued collaboration with our state leaders to identify long-term solutions and a focus on advancing the recommendations put forward by the Hartford Blue Ribbon Commission on Education in partnership with the Board of Education.”
A recent report by the mayor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Education had recommended altering the school district’s funding structure, with many actions that would require approval by state lawmakers.
Arunan Arulampalam's father-in-law is Gregory B. Butler, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Connecticut Public.
