Throughout the General Assembly’s 2025 regular session, members of AFT Connecticut-affiliated unions focused on securing more robust and equitable investments in neighborhood and magnet schools. Escalating efforts reached a peak in late May when activists joined their students, along with parents and education advocates, in civil disobedience inside the State Capitol building. Their voices were ultimately heard two weeks later when lawmakers passed – and the governor agreed to support – landmark investments in under-resourced schools.
“A budget is, at its heart, a moral document,” Julia Miller (left photo, in collage above), a member of our New Haven Federation of Teachers, said ahead of the May 21st demonstration. “Connecticut schools have the 3rd worst funding inequity in the country. We are one of the wealthiest states, and yet, the students who need the most have the least,” added Miller, who was also recognized as Connecticut’s 2025 “Teacher of the Year.”
Both a boost to overall Education Cost Sharing (ECS) funding and an adjustment to account for special education costs in its formula have long been priorities for union leaders. Over half of the overall contribution to Connecticut’s local and regional public elementary and secondary schools is met through state aid. The number of students with special education needs has spiked since the pandemic.
“Belief alone won’t close opportunity gaps; funding will,” Alicia Strong, (center, in collage) a member of our New Britain Federation of Teachers, said at the action. “We need full, equitable funding now – especially to address the crisis in staffing for special education. And it’s not just a staffing issue; it’s a justice issue, especially in black and brown districts like mine,” added Strong, who also leads the New Britain Racial Justice Coalition.
Days before leaders of affiliated unions representing educators and school support staff formally requested a package that would go a long way toward resolving Connecticut’s student learning crisis. In their letter to Governor Ned Lamont, they urged that he support “adjusting the budgetary roadblocks to ensure that necessary resources make it to the communities that need them.”
The demand echoed calls made over the preceding two years to roll back rigid reforms that were holding lawmakers back from directing equitable PreK-12 and higher education investments. Despite record surpluses of nearly $11 billion in excess funds since 2018, ECS funding remained flat, leaving local district officials scrambling after federal pandemic aid dried up last year.
“We are here today because we care about our students,” New Haven Federation of Teachers President Leslie Blatteau (right, in collage) said at the demonstration. “We are still dealing with year after year of deficits before now, which is hard to rebound from. We shouldn’t have to wait another 10 years for a revised formula,” added Blatteau, who also serves as our AFT Connecticut’s vice president for PreK-12 education.
When hundreds of members, students and advocates gathered outside the governor’s office inside the State Capitol building, several were invited in for private meeting. They emerged a short while later, announcing they would risk arrest and block the entrance until securing a commitment that fully met their demands for Connecticut’s public school students. Ten activists, including Strong and Blatteau, were arrested after peacefully refusing to give ground.
Despite holding back in the meeting, the governor acquiesced to demands to relax his rigid adherence to fiscal roadblocks. Hearing the voices of union members and our community allies, he stepped back from his prior position and empowered state lawmakers to appropriate more resources to communities in need.
The final biennial budget passed two weeks later – and which the governor has since pledged to sign – fully funds the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula for the first time in history. A significant share of additional dollars will also be allocated to local and regional school districts specifically to defray the cost of providing services to students with unique learning needs.
While the protest enabled progress toward real solutions, many families in chronically under-resourced districts still face significant financial shortfalls due to years of prior disinvestment. Officials in New Haven, New Britain, Hartford, Norwalk, Meriden and many more cities across the state are at this moment contemplating cruel service cuts and painful staff layoffs.
Now, more than ever, union members are urged to show the kind of courage displayed by their colleagues at the statehouse last month at their local boards of education.
