One year ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a major constitutional case that could change the way public school education is funded in the state - when it’s finally decided. The state’s highest court has now delayed its ruling once more.

CCJEF v. Rell is probably the single most important education case since the landmark desegregation case, Sheff v. O’Neill, which was filed 20 years ago this week.

While the full seven-member bench could have heard CCJEF last year, two justices decided not to sit, leaving five members to decide the case.

That was then.

Two weeks ago, as the year April 21st anniversary approached, Michele T. Angers, the court’s chief clerk, wrote a letter to attorneys announcing that the Court has ordered an “en banc” court. That is, instead of letting the five justices who heard the case rule on the case, it had decided to add two justices to the case in order to create a full seven-member bench.

“The urgency of our claims should be obvious,” said Dianne Kaplan deVries, the CCJEF project director. “While we’ve waited these past 12 months for a decision from the Supreme Court, thousands of students have dropped out of our public schools, with Latino students leaving at four times the rate of their white peers, and blacks and American Indians at three times the white dropout rate.

“Also this past year some 47,000 schoolchildren failed to score at even the “basic” reading level on the state’s assessments, and 40 percent of all Connecticut schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind.”

Yale Law School Clinical Professor Robert Solomon, who has overseen the CCJEF case, told the Eagle: “We are certainly pleased that a major constitutional case will be resolved en banc, but it is an important case that still has to go to trial, and we hope we can get a Supreme Court decision as quickly as possible.”

Read the entire New Haven Independent story by Marcia Chambers

Municipal leaders and education advocates used a lot of metaphors Wednesday to describe state and local budget problems.

“You can’t squeeze blood from a stone.”

“We’re facing a tsunami.”

Public education is a ship in troubled water, heading straight toward an iceberg without radar or binoculars.

The bottom line: We need more money from the state or we need relief from unfunded mandates. And we need it now.

“The governor and General Assembly must recognize that the bulk of education costs cannot continue to be passed on to cities and towns,” said Dianne Kaplan deVries, the project director for the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding.

DeVries was one of several speakers at a press conference hosted by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Municipal and school leaders from across the state gathered at the Legislative Office Building to urge lawmakers to give more relief to towns and cities that don’t feel they can raise taxes any higher to balance budgets.

Education leaders argued that municipalities need more money from the state’s Education Cost Sharing grants. In their budget proposals, both Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the Democrat-led legislature proposed keeping funding the same as last year for the grants.

“We appreciate flat funding,” said Cal Heminway, president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and a member of the Granby Board of Education. “But understand that flat funding is actually a cut on a local level.”

Read the entire Hartford Courant story by Jodie Mozdzer

Connecticut’s mayors and first selectmen said Wednesday it’s inevitable that higher taxes on the state’s wealthiest incomes will be part of this year’s budget solution in the General Assembly.

During a news conference attended by about 200 chief elected officials, budget experts and school administrators, the leaders called for more state funding for education and warned that less state aid will mean higher property taxes locally…

Diane deVries, project director of the Connecticut Coalition for Justice In Education Funding, which is awaiting a decision on state funding in the Connecticut Supreme Court, said neither the governor’s budget, proposed in February, nor the majority Democratic package voted in committee last week, has enough funding through the Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) formula.

 ”Quite simply, flat funding of the ECS is a cut,” she said. “The short-term ramifications of the state’s broken, outmoded school finance system and its heavy reliance on local property taxes are already apparent: inadequately resourced schools, gross inequities of school quality, unacceptably low academic performance by students in far too many communities, and the nation’s worst achievement gap.”

Read the entire Connecticut Post story by Ken Dixon

More than 200 gathered at the state capitol to ask for more state funding to help sustain public schools.

Both Governor Jodi Rell and the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee have proposed flat-funding the Education Cost Sharing grant, or ECS, that municipalities receive from the state.

According to Dianne Kaplan deVries, the Project Director for the State’s Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, these budget proposals will result in massive layoffs, larger class sizes, and many program cuts.

“As municipalities and their school boards struggle to pay for rising wages tied to contractual obligations, ever-escalating healthcare premiums, soaring special education costs, and heavy burdens owing to No Child Left Behind and other federal and state mandates, the Governor and the general assemble must recognize that the bulk of education costs cannot continue to be passed on to cities and towns.”

Read the entire NPR story