President George W. Bush told the nation Tuesday night that “education is my top priority,” pledging to streamline dozens of federal education programs into just five and letting states spend money in those categories as they see fit. This sounded like good news and drew long and loud applause from the assembled legislators and dignitaries, but given our state’s recent policies with regard to educational funding, we doubt Newtown will benefit much from this new national commitment to education.

Connecticut has been enjoying a national reputation for educational excellence in recent years. Gov John Rowland told the National Education Summit two years ago that the state’s secret of success was “high expectations, high standards, and hard work – all focused on student achievement.” What needs to be said, however, is that this success is being achieved in towns like Newtown in the face of significant cutbacks in state aid for local schools.

In the last six years, the state aid per pupil in Newtown has declined by 25 percent. The receding tide of state money has undermined local educational funding at a time when local school enrollment has soared along with costs associated with that growth. Connecticut’s Education Enhancement Act of 1986 committed the state to support significant increases in teachers’ salaries – a commitment that fell far short of expectations in Newtown. First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said this week that if the state had lived up to its obligations under that law, the town would have received an additional $7.5 million in state aid last year, which would have cut the tax rate by over four mills. The Legislative Council this year is struggling to keep this year’s tax increase in the two to two-and-a-half mill range by imposing cutbacks in the school budget that are likely to increase class sizes and degrade the school system’s educational program. A four-mill swing in the tax rate would have given Newtown taxpayers a tax cut this year.

Not every town has fared as badly as Newtown. Urban centers and “near urban” towns have been the focus of the state’s educational spending priorities. Unlike wealthy towns in lower Fairfield County, Newtown’s taxpayers don’t have the economic stamina to sustain significant property tax increases year after year. As a result, local education suffers.

The state’s cutbacks in educational funding to towns like Newtown have come at the same time the state has been piling up large surpluses and turning money back to state taxpayers. In the last five years, Connecticut has cut nearly $2 billion in taxes. That reflects well on the governor and state legislators. The tax cuts, however, have in large part been merely a transfer of the tax burden from the progressive state income tax to the regressive local property tax, where the value of one’s home or farm property often has little correlation with one’s ability to afford higher and higher levels of taxation.

So while we welcome President Bush’s new emphasis on education, we call on state officials and legislators to do their part to fulfill the promise of a better public education for all students with more equitable policies for state support of local schools.