Hartford schools face a $77 million deficit. That means cuts loom and ‘really difficult decisions’

Facing stagnant funds, inflated costs and the expiration of millions in COVID relief, Hartford Public Schools warned community members at a virtual forum that the district will need to make drastic cuts to services in order to balance the budget next school year.

District leaders said Thursday that without mitigation measures, Hartford public schools will face a $77.7 million deficit in 2024-2025.

HPS leadership said it would take $504.3 million to cycle 2023-2024 services into the next school year, but with a projected revenue of $426.6 million, the district must decide which programs will get the boot.

“We’re forced to make some really difficult decisions when it comes to our budget,” HPS Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said. “We now have less room to move.”

The recent budget forum was the first of three opportunities for HPS parents and stakeholders to weigh in on the district’s financial priorities.

Torres-Rodriguez said she expects that the budget will be ready for adoption by the Board of Education on April 16.

The superintendent said Hartford’s financial outlook is complicated by growing fixed costs.

The state’s school choice system, which requires home districts to cover the tuition of resident students who attend magnet or open choice programs in other districts, cost Hartford $95 million in 2021-2022 — 22% of the overall budget.

Torres-Rodriguez said this financial burden will only grow under the 2022 Sheff vs. O’Neill settlement, which has the potential to add 2,737 open choice seats for Hartford students by the 2028-29 school year.

“Over the next 10 years, that could cost us an additional $44 million in tuition,” Torres-Rodriguez said.

HPS spends $62 million, or 17% of the budget, on special education services, another cost that Torres-Rodriguez expects will increase. In comparison, the average district in Connecticut spends 6% on special education, according to Hartford’s analysis of data from the state Department of Education.

Deputy Superintendent Paul Foster said tuition and special education expenses, combined with transportation, clinic costs and utility fees, are projected to total $221.9 million in fixed costs next year, leaving less than half of the $426.6 million revenue up for discretionary spending.

Last March the Hartford Board of Education approved a $429 million budget for 2023-2024 school year. Foster said that in 2024-2025, these same offerings would cost HPS $504.3 million.

“There’s a big difference between the money we have to spend, and what it would cost us to provide the same level of service,” Foster said. “We literally do not have the money to do everything we’ve always done, or at least not in the way we’ve always done it.”

The bulk of the $77.7 million shortfall is driven by rising mandatory costs and a 13% fiscal cliff from the expiration of COVID-19 aid from the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund.

While the ESSER money may be gone, Torres-Rodriguez said the needs exacerbated by the pandemic have not disappeared.

“This is multiple, multiple years of (recovery) work that we would have to do. And we’re seeing it,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “We’re seeing it now.”

Despite these challenges, Torres-Rodriguez said the loss of ESSER funding could result in a possible upside: a reduction in staff vacancies in the district.

“We believe that other districts are not going to get millions of dollars … to continue to pay for the added staff. And so we know that there are gonna be more staff available looking for jobs,” Torres Rodriguez said.

ESSER funding added 230 staff positions to HPS and expanded extracurricular offerings, learning programs and professional training opportunities, among other initiatives.

Foster said HPS will likely not discontinue all of these programs, but the district must determine what it can and cannot afford.

“We are thinking about what is most important. We’re also thinking about how we (can) get creative to do things in new and different ways that are potentially more efficient, or … less dollars,” Foster said.

In virtual breakout rooms at Thursday’s forum, district facilitators asked the public what to keep, what to cut, and to weigh whether “rigorous instruction” or “student connection to school” is most important to them.

“At the end of the day, how do you choose one over the other?” One Hartford grandmother said.

The woman said she is worried about how proposed cuts would impact the services that students, including her granddaughter, rely on.

“To have her come home and say, ‘Hey Grams, as of today we will no longer have this because of X, Y, Z’ — it takes a toll on the kids,” she said.

Kiera Steele, a program director at ConnectiKids, a program that provides enrichment services and educational support to four Hartford schools, said nonprofit partnerships benefit students and the community.

“Partners are doing home visits, they’re part of attendance meetings, they’re not just after school programs. They’re not just people who are there after school with the kids. They do actually support the schools in many ways where if those partners weren’t there, then the teachers might not have that time to do that or it would be just on the [The Family & Community Support Service Provider] to do that.”

Steele also asked HPS to try to maintain some field trips and enrichment style programs that are often the first to go in budget cuts.

“It seems like they are extra, but it really makes a difference in the students’ learning and the passion of them wanting to learn,” Steele said.

Give the carrying needs and programs across the district, Steele and others encouraged HPS to take an individualized approach to cuts at each school.