Clips

CT Mirror • 23rd June 2026

Report: CT schools among the most segregated in the U.S.

A nationwide study released Monday by Brown’s Promise and The Segregation Tracking Project identified Connecticut as one of the most segregated states in the country.

The study used data from the 2023-24 school year, the latest available, to measure both economic and racial segregation in each state. Researchers found Connecticut had the sixth-highest level of economic segregation and 11th-highest level of racial segregation in the U.S. It also ranked third-worst for “poverty packing,” the prac...

CT Mirror • 19th June 2026

CT schools double down on early detection to help reading scores

The first step to solving a reading delay is knowing it exists.

Decades of research have found that all children learn to read by developing the same core skills. This applies to children with dyslexia, English language learners and those reading well beyond grade level. Per the science of reading, some kids just need more targeted and explicit instruction — more time building whichever specific reading skill (and there are several) isn’t growing as fast.

But to do that, teachers need to figur...

CT Mirror • 17th June 2026

CT special education advocates slam Trump Ed Dept. moves

As U.S. Education Sec. Linda McMahon describes it, the Trump administration’s decision to rehouse two key special education offices is all about safeguarding the rights of students with disabilities.

The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, OSERS, and the Office of Civil Rights, OCR, both play key roles in ensuring schools follow the nation’s bedrock special education laws. As the Trump administration works to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, it’s moving OSERS to...

CT Mirror • 17th June 2026

Vernon unveils 50-year-old treasures buried during bicentennial

Terry Crabb has waited 50 years for this moment.

She was an 8-year-old student at Vernon’s Northeast School when the district buried a massive cement sarcophagus containing letters, drawings and a range of paraphernalia to capture life in their present day — the year 1976. The occasion was the bicentennial, and the vault was a time capsule, destined to be opened for the nation’s 250th birthday.

Crabb recalls her grandfather, with whom she lived at the time, telling her how exciting it would be...

CT Mirror • 4th June 2026

Lamont kicks off Blue Ribbon Commission on education funding

Gov. Ned Lamont’s Blue Ribbon Commission on K-12 Education Funding and Accountability has officially launched.

The 23-member commission is chaired by Lamont’s deputy chief of staff, Natalie Wagner, and includes a mix of bipartisan state and local elected officials, union leaders, school administrators and policy analysts. Its mission: to interrogate the entirety of Connecticut’s complex school funding system and propose reforms.

The governor appeared in person to share opening remarks and lay...

CT Mirror • 20th May 2026

Lamont hesitant to opt CT into federal scholarship tax credit

“Literally free money.”

That’s how Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, described the new “federal scholarship tax credit,” which Congress passed into law last year as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also known as HR 1.

Under the program, individuals may donate up to $1,700 to a “scholarship granting organization” and receive the full amount back as a federal tax credit. These organizations then disburse the funds as scholarships to students to cover tuition at private or parochial schools or...

CT Mirror • 12th May 2026

CT education legislation: What passed and what failed in 2026

Legislators on Connecticut’s Education Committee started the 2026 session with big plans.

At the top of the list: increasing, for the first time since 2013, the cost-per-pupil written into the state’s main school funding formula. This number had been set at $11,525 for over a decade, with no adjustment for inflation. With such an adjustment, this so-called “foundation amount” would be about $16,000 per student today — a difference of hundreds of millions of dollars across all the state’s school...

CT Mirror • 6th May 2026

Lamont's bell-to-bell cellphone ban expected to die in Senate

One of the quirks of the legislative process is that a partisan bill can pass while a bipartisan one dies.

Such is the case for a pair of headline education bills in Connecticut this year. House Bill 5468, which imposes Connecticut’s first homeschooling regulations, barely survived the Education Committee and faced strenuous opposition at every step; it now awaits Gov. Ned Lamont’s signature. House Bill 5035, a bell-to-bell cellphone ban for public schools proposed by Lamont himself, cleared th...

CT Mirror • 5th May 2026

CT adopts homeschool regulation over staunch objection from GOP

A controversial bill to impose Connecticut’s first regulations on homeschooling gained final passage in the Senate after lengthy debate Monday evening. Senators voted, largely along party lines, passing the legislation 22-14 just before midnight.

House Bill 5468 has faced pushback from Republicans at every stage of the legislative process, backed by a large and vocal body of homeschooling families who see the new regulations as an attack on their rights and freedoms. It narrowly cleared the Edu...

CT Mirror • 30th April 2026

Spring peeper one hop closer to becoming CT state amphibian

Across the eastern United States, and stretching into Canada, residents know it’s spring when they hear the chirp of the spring peeper.

Now, the tiny messenger of winter’s end is on track to become Connecticut’s state amphibian, indelibly tying the identity of the Nutmeg State to the moment when green returns to the landscape and winter coats return to the closet. The House advanced the bill codifying the peeper’s status, House Bill 5534, on Thursday by a vote of 136-0. It now goes to the Senat...

CT Mirror • 27th April 2026

CT school cellphone ban passes House with bipartisan support

A bill that would impose a statewide bell-to-bell cellphone ban in public schools cleared the state House of Representatives Monday by a vote of 117-31.

Twenty Republicans joined most Democrats in passing House Bill 5035, which prohibits students across Connecticut from using cellphones on school grounds during the school day. What exactly students do with those phones — whether they keep them in backpacks, for example, or store them in locked pouches — would remain a question for individual di...

CT Mirror • 24th April 2026

CT homeschool bill passes House, heads to Senate

A controversial bill to create a limited system of oversight for homeschooling in Connecticut passed during a lengthy session of the House of Representatives Thursday by a vote of 96-53.

House Bill 5468 has faced strenuous pushback at each step of the legislative process, and Thursday’s debate was no different. Education Committee Ranking Member Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, went painstakingly through the lines of the bill as she fired an hourslong barrage of questions at committee co-Chair R...

CT Mirror • 20th April 2026

House Speaker 'confident' schools will get $170M boost this year

Legislative Democrats are homing in on a $170 million infusion for Connecticut public schools this year, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Monday.

It’s slightly more than the $150 million House Democrats were kicking around a month ago, and significantly above the $100 million floor Gov. Ned Lamont offered Thursday. That was an upward shift for the fiscally moderate governor, who had provided no such additional funding in his February budget proposal.

Ritter said he thinks legislator...

CT Mirror • 17th April 2026

CT legislators rewrite homeschool bill in bid to win over colleagues

Democrats have rewritten their last remaining homeschooling bill in an effort to make the legislation palatable enough to clear the House.

The rewrite of House Bill 5468 would remove a requirement that families submit evidence of instruction to the state each year. Parents would still have to notify schools in person when withdrawing a child to homeschool, and they would still have to pass a one-time check to see if someone in the household is on the state abuse and neglect registry or under in...

CT Mirror • 16th April 2026

Pressed for immediate aid, Lamont launches study on education

This story has been updated.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive order creating a commission on education funding and accountability drew appreciation Thursday for confronting a perennially difficult issue and skepticism over whether the exercise will produce change in how Connecticut pays for its public schools.

The public signing of the Executive Order 26-3 comes in the final three weeks of a legislative session that has yet to resolve how much of the $500 million informally earmarked for addressin...

CT Mirror • 1st April 2026

CT lawmakers' budget leaves out key funding boost for schools

Students, teachers and school administrators were gathered at the steps of the Meriden Board of Education building Tuesday in support of an increase to Connecticut’s core school funding grant when they got some bad news from their state senator, Jan Hochadel.

The legislature’s Appropriations Committee had proposed flat-funding the grant for yet another year.

A wave of “boos” passed through the crowd.
“Oh yeah. We need it louder!” Hochadel said.

“Boo!” several members of the crowd shouted.

T...

CT Mirror • 28th March 2026

No Kings rallies in CT draw thousands, old and young, in protest

Protestors and activists packed the Connecticut state Capitol lawn in Hartford on Saturday for the third “No Kings” rally since the November 2024 election of President Donald Trump to a second term. 

At the most recent “No Kings” rally, which took place in October, an estimated 10,000 people came to the state Capitol to protest the Trump administration’s actions on immigration, health care, environmental regulation rollbacks and voting redistricting.

Capitol Police on Saturday estimated that...

CT Mirror • 28th March 2026

No Kings rallies in CT draw thousands, old and young, in protest

Protestors and activists packed the Connecticut state Capitol lawn in Hartford on Saturday for the third “No Kings” rally since the November 2024 election of President Donald Trump to a second term. 

At the most recent “No Kings” rally, which took place in October, an estimated 10,000 people came to the state Capitol to protest the Trump administration’s actions on immigration, health care, environmental regulation rollbacks and voting redistricting.

Capitol Police on Saturday estimated that...

CT Mirror • 27th March 2026

School crisis drills in CT get rules and standards with new law

This story has been updated.

Abbey Clements, a former second-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, has lived through a school shooting. But she’s not enthusiastic about school crisis response drills.

Clements, who co-founded the national advocacy organization Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence in 2021, has two problems with crisis drills. First, she said, it’s an open question how much they actually keep kids safe from active shooters. Second, there’s some evidence drills may be hurting kids...

CT Mirror • 8th March 2026

Should CT adopt a cellphone ban in schools? Lawmakers to decide

James Tierinni has seen what happens when schools ban phones.

“About eight, nine years ago, I had to police people’s cellphones. And I’d have to talk to the same kid over and over again,” Tierinni said. Now, when he gives out a class exercise, “they turn their desks, they talk to each other … and it’s generally just so much more of a positive environment.”

Tierinni teaches math in Manchester. The district became an early adopter of a bell-to-bell cellphone ban across all schools a few years ag...

CT Mirror • 17th February 2026

CT schools on Lamont's K-12 budget: 'A trainwreck for education'

This year, Putnam Public Schools Superintendent Steven Rioux will ask the town of Putnam to give its school district an additional $1.6 million — a 7.23% increase from last year.

“When I built my budget this year, I asked the principals to tell me what you need, and the need was about $2.5 million, or an 11% increase,” Rioux said. “That’s not going to happen, right?”

So Rioux started cutting. He cut staff, resources and programs, and when he was done, he had whittled that 11% increase down to...

CT Mirror • 11th February 2026

Advocates call to end school suspensions for nonviolent behavior

When Shanlay Claude was in 10th grade, one of his friends was suspended for being in the bathroom with the wrong group of kids at the wrong time.

From that moment on, Claude said, his friend “changed for the worse.”

“He spent like two months not coming, not showing up to school, not showing up anywhere,” Claude said. “I’ve seen him posting online about guns … things students shouldn’t have in their hands.”
Both Claude and his friend were in AP math together and would compete to see who could g...

CT Mirror • 10th February 2026

CT's first 'course in a box' focuses on music history

Connecticut education leaders are expressing cautious optimism as the state Department of Education tries its hand at course development.

The department announced the release of its first-ever “Course in a Box,” An American History of Rock and Soul, in January. It’s a one-semester elective designed for teachers to deploy straight out of the box (metaphorically — the materials are stored in a digital library), using music as a primary source to explore key social movements and events.

The state...

CT Mirror • 5th February 2026

Lamont kicks off universal breakfast push at West Hartford school

Gov. Ned Lamont joined school officials and advocates on Thursday during the lunch period at the Florence E. Smith STEM School in West Hartford to renew his push for universal free breakfast for K-12 students.

Behind them sat a large group of second graders eating pasta and salad. When it came time for his remarks, Lamont asked if they wanted to join him in front of the cameras — an invitation they eagerly accepted.

This is the second year Lamont has urged the General Assembly to fund universa...