CT Senate passes early childhood, special education bill
The Connecticut Senate passed a priority bill on Friday evening by a vote of 32-4 after an hourslong filibuster from some Republicans.
The bill now heads to the House and, if passed into law, would create a groundbreaking new fund for early childhood education that draws from surplus funds, with up to $300 million invested each year. Also included in the bill are new supports related to special education for school districts, teachers and students.
Advocates cheered and legislators embraced on Friday night after the passage of Senate Bill 1, calling it a major step forward in a state where the too-small and underfunded early childhood education sector has made it difficult for working families, especially mothers, to pay for and even find quality infant, toddler and pre-K programming for their kids.
Advocates of the bill include Gov. Ned Lamont, who pledged in February to make a game-changing investment in early childhood, drawing on surplus funds. At the time, Lamont was focused on creating a universal pre-K fund. S.B. 1 represents a more wide-ranging effort to create not just free or low-cost pre-K but also slots for infant and toddler care, something that advocates and educators say is sorely needed.
Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye said Friday that the governor was feeling great about the bill.
“The governor was very flexible with that (infant and toddler spots),” Bye said, “because he knows that’s a big challenge, too.”
Under the plan, families making up to $100,000 a year would pay nothing for the child care services, which would be run through Early Start programs, while families making more than $100,000 a year would pay no more than 7% of their annual income, with no income limit. The bill would also improve salaries for workers in those centers so that they’re more in line with public school teacher salaries and includes a health care subsidy program for those workers.
As the Senate prepared to vote on the bill, President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, discussed a report from Dalio Education on “disconnected youth” as a motivator. Looney said, “so many of our children come to kindergarten unprepared to be there,” and then experience humiliation when they realize they are already behind their peers. He said that sets them on a path toward disconnection from school down the road, whereas the proposed bill would create a chance to come to school prepared for success.
Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Wilton, who is co-chair of the Committee on Children, celebrated the bill’s passage.
“I’m so excited about this transformational bill, for parents, for providers, for advocates, for everyone who has had a hand in this, from the governor to OPM to the office of the treasurer, to the legislature,” she said. “It means we are making a permanent investment in the future of child care in our state, and it is the first state in the union to do this.”
Maher said what distinguishes Connecticut from states like Vermont and New Mexico, which have also made investments in early childhood education, is that Connecticut is taking a holistic approach to trying to make improvements throughout the system, from provider pay to creating more spaces. “It will change the nature of child care in Connecticut,” she said.
But critics of the bill argued that the state would be violating its fiscal guardrails in using surplus money to pay for it all. Sen. Eric Berthel, R-Watertown, and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, attempted and failed to pass an amendment to the bill that would have used money from the general fund instead of surplus funds. Harding argued that in using surplus funds, legislators were being dishonest with their constituents.
“You’re telling your constituency, ‘Well, legally we can do this within the guardrails,’ but you know as we all know that it violates the spirit of why the guardrails are there,” he said.
Harding said that the surplus should only go toward one of two things: the rainy day fund or paying down the state’s debt. “If we can’t find $40 million as a priority in a multibillion dollars budget toward early childhood and early education initiatives, I think our priorities are lost,” he said.
But the bill’s transformational aspirations rely on using surplus funds, and socking them away into an endowment that would grow over time. As time goes on, 10% of those funds could be used each year, an ever-larger sum as the fund continues to build.
While there may have been disagreement earlier in the session about the best path forward to address the early childhood education crisis, the smiles, handshakes and cheers from lawmakers and advocates who had once championed different bills showed unity.
“This is the result of a long, constructive set of negotiations to try and get to something that really works,” said Merrill Gay, the executive director of the CT Early Childhood Alliance.
“It’s amazing, said Eva Bermúdez Zimmerman, the coalition director of Child Care for CT, “and next year we’ll be back to ask for more money.”
The bill also includes supports for special education, which Sen. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox, D-Trumbull, said respond to feedback collected by the Select Committee on Special Education, which she co-chairs.
The bill includes a $10 million grant to create better special education programming in some districts so that students don’t have to travel out of district. And it requires programs to send out notifications when staffing changes, like substitute teachers, last more than 10 school days — disruptions that can have a big impact on special education students. It also creates an educational ombudsman who would help mediate issues that arise when families are having trouble accessing services. The special education provisions in the bill complement those in House Bill 5001.
“Education has to be a priority for Connecticut, we are building our future,” Gadkar-Wilcox said. From early childhood to special education to higher education, “we need to think about how these pieces are interconnected.”
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