The New Britain Racial Justice Coalition has announced that it will hold a campaign rally launch to press for greater city education funding.
“New Britain has neglected public education for years,” the Coalition says. “The city consistently ranks second-to-last in per student spending. Meanwhile, the city government continues to underfund students.”
“We must demand a serious investment in the city’s future leaders, our students,” the Coalition says. “Join us as we start this campaign.”
The rally is to be held on Monday, December 21, 2020. It is to begin at 5:30pm in Central Park in downtown New Britain.
“Strict social distancing,” the Coalition says. “Masks required.”
The Coalition added, “and school administrators fail to directly challenge institutional racism in the public school system. Marginalized staff and students are forced to endure this reality.”
Republican Mayor Erin Stewart has been criticized for the low city commitment to funding for the operation of the city’s schools, repeatedly freezing the amount of money that the city allocates locally to its schools, as her budget does this year, despite millions of dollars in increases in funding for City Hall departments.
City education funding, the amount of money that the city allocates from local taxes to fund the regular annual budget of the city’s schools, has become a significant issue for New Britain. Stewart’s budgets to have only increased city funding for New Britain schools’ operating budgets by an average of less than 0.7% per year.
As the New Britain Progressive reported in 2019, the low amount of education funding provided by the city government appears to be correlated with low student academic test scores in New Britain.
