DAILY NEWS CLIP: March 25, 2025

Early childhood, special education programs move ahead in CT legislature


CT Insider – Tuesday, March 25, 2025
By Ken Dixon

HARTFORD — The legislative Education Committee on Monday approved a bill that would use about $300 million in the anticipated budgetary surplus to create a fund for supplemental early childhood programming.

A top priority of Senate Democrats, the bill heads next to the Senate floor. State Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, co-chairman of the committee, said that while the bill is not completely drafted, it expresses the majority’s priorities to prepare kids for school and support families at a time of high day care costs.

“These are dollars that may be availability after we pay off our pension obligations and things of that magnitude,” McCrory told the Democrat-dominated committee of the plans for three- and four-year-olds. “As a state, we’re making it a priority. We’re saying that early childhood education is very important and we want to make sure we fund it so all of our children throughout the state of Connecticut have access to early childhood education. We haven’t done this before. We think it’s not just a policy change but an investment in our future.”

He said that potential providers would include private companies, public schools and home care professionals. The bill envisions for employers to take up one-third of the cost, the families would pay one-third, up to 7 percent of their income and the state would pay for a third. McCrory said that interest off the $300 million fund would support the program through interest payments.

“What we are doing, and maybe it’s the right thing to do, but what we are doing is diverting from what we have done for eight years, which is pay down those pension liabilities and we’re taking that remaining surplus now to create that endowment fund,” said Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington. “Is that right?”

A nonpartisan legislative attorney said that the bill would require three-fifths votes in the House and Senate because it would use an unallocated surplus not heading to pay off the state’s under-funded pensions for teachers and state employees.

During recent public testimony on the issue, Beth Bye, a former state senator who is now the state’s commissioner for the Office of Early Childhood, stressed that the plan dovetails somewhat with Gov. Ned Lamont’s plans for universal pre-kindergarten.

“There are also distinct differences,” Bye recently told the committee, detailing interest in further discussions as the General Assembly heads toward its midnight June 4 adjournment.

The committee also approved an uncompleted bill on a top priority of House Democrats on the funding of special education, which next heads to the -budget-writing Appropriations Committee. Republicans complained that the details of the bill still awaits action in the Select Committee on Special Education.

Rep. Maryam Khan, D-Windsor, a member of the select committee, said that Education Committee members can talk with her about proposals they might want to see in an eventual bill, which would come to the Education Committee.

“We are no where near where we want to be at this point,” said Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, who along with other Republicans voted against the bill. A member of the select committee on special education, Zupkus said that a lot of good ideas have been discussed, “I have no doubt that the select committee will do good work,” said Howard, who criticized so-called placeholder bills that are only partially drafted.

Leeper said that the eventual bill will become highly scrutinized, first in a public hearing in the select committee, then again when the Education Committee gets it and finally more scrutiny by the Appropriations Committee.

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