Ten Connecticut school districts can produce two high school graduates for the price of one Hartford high school diploma, according to Department of Education data. The most recent 13 years of education, representing kindergarten through 12th grade, cost $165,275 in Hartford. With a graduation rate of 69.3 percent, the cost per diploma in Hartford is [...]
The State Board of Labor Relations ruled four school districts can give teachers bonuses as part of a program that provides outside funding for college-level classes. The Plainville, Region 11, Windsor and Windsor Locks school districts can continue to participate in Project Opening Doors, a nonprofit that funds Advanced Placement classes in Connecticut public schools. [...]
The American Jobs Act – a $447 billion combination of tax cuts and government spending championed by President Barack Obama – will fund 3,800 teaching jobs in Connecticut at an average cost of more than $88,000. The one-time infusion of $336 million will temporarily help school districts rehire laid off teachers or avoid laying them [...]
State auditors first notified Southern Connecticut State University that it overpaid employees in a December 2000 audit, a problem that persists unresolved in the most recent audit, issued almost 11 years later. The Auditors of Public Accounts reviewed ten payments to employees in 1998 and 1999 for unused sick and vacation time and found none [...]
State auditors have uncovered evidence of timecard forgery at Southern Connecticut State University, including suspicious signatures by a supervisor who was on vacation. The Auditors of Public Accounts released Monday their report on SCSU for 2008 and 2009 which found numerous problems with university practices. The auditors said a university employee got a new job [...]
The state of Connecticut spends a lot of money supporting school districts, paying nearly 10 percent of the state budget in direct grants. And each year cities and towns put up a fight at the Capitol to keep their share of funds. The state’s educational cost sharing grants are paid based on a complicated formula [...]
Gov. Dannel Malloy celebrated the recent passage of a bill giving in-state tuition subsidies to undocumented immigrants by calling it “an increased opportunity for our state’s students to succeed in whatever path they choose.” As long as they don’t want to work for the State of Connecticut, that is. “The state follows the federal [...]
Update your GPS. Bridgeport just got bigger. Forty-eight acres formerly in Trumbull are now in Bridgeport. Gov. Dannel Malloy signed Senate Bill 1238, a special act changing the municipal-boundary line between Bridgeport and Trumbull, Saturday after the General Assembly passed it unanimously. The state made the boundary change because Bridgeport and Trumbull could not come [...]
The rich benefits of state-employee pension plans are well known. Many critics suggest they should be changed from defined-benefit to defined-contribution plans. Connecticut already has an optional defined-contribution plan, similar to a 401(k), higher education employees can choose, forgoing their pensions. The Alternate Retirement Program is designed to give employees additional flexibility and portability, while [...]
Federal officials denied the University of Connecticut Health Center a $100 million grant last month, which, according to the grant application, will pose a challenge for the state’s struggling academic hospital. The application – to fund one third of a $332 million project to build a new bed tower for John Dempsey Hospital – makes [...]
