Sanchez Criticizes Stewart Over School Comments

Rep. Bobby Sanchez (D-25) sharply criticized Republican Mayor Erin Stewart over Stewart’s New Britain High School comments.

Stewart had said that, “what it comes down to is the fact that there are no consequences for bad behavior, and this is the end result.”

Stewart was commenting on a reports of alleged acts of vandalism, theft and even violence by students at NBHS, and the since withdrawn decision by school officials to do remote learning for three days to hit a, “refresh button” on the school year. Stewart blamed the school district for not getting, “behavior problems under control.”

Stewart even raised the possibility of using, “help of the New Britain Police Department,” in the matter.

“Last night into this morning,” Sanchez said on Wednesday, “I received a number of phone calls from confused parents looking for answers from city hall on how to ensure our schools are safe learning environments.”

Sanchez added, “Today’s events have confirmed what we have always known: our schools and our children are not a priority for this Republican Mayor and administration.” Sanchez commented,

After everything our students and teachers have been through the past year and a half, New Britain needs steady leadership that will listen and collaborate. Instead, the Republican Mayor today pinned blame on teachers, students, staff, and the Board of Education and politized the situation.

Sanchez is the Democratic candidate for Mayor, after winning the support of Democratic voters in the New Britain Democratic primary on September 14th.

Stewart has been accused campaigning on the politics of crime, reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s infamously racist “Southern Strategy,” in which Republican politicians have long been criticized of pressing the politics of crime, stoking fear and using “law and order” as racist code words.

In July, then Democratic Mayoral candidate Alicia Hernandez Strong said that, “We cannot bring in another era of mass incarceration that hurts our families and communities.”

The recent incident is just the most recent time Stewart has been criticized this year over comments she has made about New Britain’s schools.

Earlier in the year, Stewart came under intense criticism for comments she made in her annual “state of the city” address, in which she doubled-down on her underfunding of the city’s schools. Stewart bluntly said that her longstanding policy of low-funding to New Britain’s schools would continue in the city budget, saying, “what I will not do is blindly throw additional tax dollars into a massive bureaucracy that is failing our students.”

City leaders strongly criticized Stewart for those comments, and for her low funding for New Britain schools, in general. But, in June, City Council Republicans agreed with Stewart, voting down a proposal by Council Democrats that sought to increase school funding

“As mayor,” Rep. Sanchez commented on Wednesday, “our students’ education will be my top priority. That means investing in the success of our students and teachers, creating more after school programs and stopping the flat funding of schools.”

Stewart essentially admitted, in her state of the city comments, that she has flat-funded the city’s schools, saying, “Every year, the Consolidated School District of New Britain receives about $126 million of taxpayer money, and today, it is dead last, when every metric within the state of Connecticut education performance index.”

But critics have pointed to Stewart’s flat-funding of schools as an important reason for those low academic scores.

The New Britain Progressive reported in 2019 that, despite New Britain receiving, “the fifth highest state Education Cost Sharing grant funding of all of the cities and towns in the state,”

New Britain’s own local commitment to education, on the other hand, is among the lowest municipal school districts in the state. Only Bridgeport allocated less local funding per student than New Britain in the 2015-2016 state data.

While New Britain residents have less money than the state average to fund local services, the New Britain Progressive reported that, even looking at a percent of the city’s ability to pay, the city of New Britain still appeared to allocate to its schools, “the second lowest among municipal school districts in the state.”

Hartford’s contribution was not in that data and may have been lower, still, which would have made New Britain third lowest.

The New Britain Progressive also reported in 2019 that,

Comparing the amount of local support for education, using the 2015-2016 data, to the most recent academic test scores appears to show a general correlation between how much a city or town provides in local funding for their schools and the test scores of the students in their schools. The comparison appears to show New Britain’s place near the bottom of both local education funding and test scores as part of a larger pattern, with New Britain near the low end of the scale.

In 2019, the New Britain Progressive reported that, at that time, it appeared that it would have taken a $14 million or more per year local education funding increase from the city to get the city up to the average amount cities and towns spent as a portion of their local ability to pay, apparently leaving New Britain’s city commitment to annual school operating budgets far behind the benchmarks that appear correlated with higher educational outcomes.

Many have accused Stewart of obfuscating the city’s responsibility for supporting the education of New Britain’s kids, with some speculating that Stewart does not consider it the responsibility of the city at all.

The city’s schools have relied heavily during Stewart’s administration on increases in state aid brought into the city by the governor and the city’s state legislative delegation. “We have delivered millions back to our city,” Rep. Sanchez said earlier, “but without partners on the city level that care about education our schools will continue to be underfunded.”

“The Mayor,” Sanchez said on Wednesday, “likes to use the New Britain high school colors for her campaign but has done little to support the school.”