On the eve of Connecticut”™s encore embarrassment of not getting past the first round in federal “Race to the Top” preschool funding, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy vowed to make education his top priority in 2012.
He may find a tough set of graders eyeing his work.
Even as it installed Redding resident and Santa Energy Corp. CEO Tom Santa as its new chairman, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association put education at the top of its own wish list for improving the state”™s economy ”“ ahead of its longtime focus on cutting taxes, government spending and regulatory red tape.
CBIA”™s reinvigorated focus on education arrives as Connecticut has struck out a second time in its bid for $50 million in the Obama administration”™s Race to the Top program, which rewards states for innovative leaps in improving schools. During the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Malloy did not mince words on Connecticut”™s failure under former Gov. M. Jodi Rell to land funding in Race to the Top, with New York and multiple other Northeast states moving on to a subsequent round of the federal competition.
With the state missing out on $50 million in U.S. Department of Education funding under his watch, Malloy again blamed his predecessors in a prepared statement.
“High-quality education for all of Connecticut”™s children is a top priority for my administration, and we should be pleased with the strong application that we submitted; it will serve as a roadmap as we move forward on education reform,” Malloy stated. “However, we were aware going in that we were at a disadvantage ”“ a lack of investment over the past decade meant that we did not have the infrastructure in place, or have a well-developed or coordinated early learning system. That will change.”
It better, as Santa sees it. He knows firsthand about the challenges facing Connecticut and not just in his roles as CEO of Santa Energy and now chairman of CBIA. His oldest child decamped for San Diego, largely for lifestyle and affordability reasons.
It is a story shared by many parents in Connecticut, and the state faces the dual challenges of getting companies to stay or come here and ensuring its future workforce is of a sufficient quality to keep them here when their leases come up for renewal a decade or more down the line.
“One of CBIA”™s key goals is simply restoring or building business confidence in Connecticut ”“ whether being the confidence of people in Connecticut today or making other people (confident in) coming to Connecticut,” Santa said.
The association”™s CEO John Rathgeber calls 2012 nothing less than a “watershed year” for Connecticut”™s economy. While about half of business owners and managers polled by CBIA said they expect the economy to get worse in the near future, according to a third-quarter survey, that was actually an improvement from three months prior when about three in four said that was their expectation. Fairfield County businesses accounted for less than a quarter of survey participants.
For Santa and Rathgeber alike, businesses must now focus as much on the long-term future for its schools as any short-term cures for the economy.
“I think there is a big emphasis going into 2012 on public education,” Rathgeber said. “We”™ve been working on an agenda that would not only raise student performance across the board ”¦ but make sure kids have the skill sets they need to be productive citizens.”
