In NL, Federal Mandates Could Mean Staff Cuts

By DAN PEARSON
Education Reporter
Published on 1/21/2005

New London — Meeting federal spending requirements could cost up to four staff positions as the No Child Left Behind Act jeopardizes funding for teachers of English as a second language, preschool and kindergarten, paraprofessionals and literacy tutors, Board of Education members said Thursday.

Sandra Carrington, the city schools' director of grants, said that part of the district's annual $4 million federal Consolidated Grant, which includes a substantial amount of Title I funding for schools with many poor children, will have to be re-allotted because of the federal law.

Some schools have been cited under the law for failing to make adequate progress as measured by student scores on standardized tests. Those with that designation for two years in a row are considered “in need of improvement” and become subject to an increasingly stringent set of penalties, including having to provide tutoring or “school choice.”

Parents of 16 students in C.B. Jennings and Edgerton elementary schools have exercised the option to transfer their children from those schools, which are deemed in need of improvement, to others in the city that meet the law's requirements.

Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School is also deemed in need of improvement, but it is not subject to school choice because it does not receive Title I funding.

Carrington said the district will be required to redirect up to $291,359 of its 2005-06 Title I funding to provide the required tutoring and transportation for school-choice transfers.

Carrington said that will require the district to cut up to four positions now funded by Title I money.

Carrington and School Superintendent Christopher Clouet said it would be very difficult to find new grants or funding sources to compensate for the required expenditures. Carrington said federal funds that were formerly awarded based on poverty levels and need are now “competitive” grants available to a far smaller pool of applicants.

Board members, who must take this into account as they begin to prepare the schools' 2005-06 budget, said the information was “very bad news” that highlighted the problems of No Child Left Behind, which has been underfunded nationwide by about $27 billion since its inception in 2001.

“It seems odd to me that, in the age of No Child Left Behind, they would tinker with the formula so that it harms the districts that need the funds most,” said David Condon, board chairman.

Also, Clouet said the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference did not permit varsity athletes to be exempted from Physical Education courses. The information came after board member Shannon Heap earlier this month requested a determination on the matter.