Chris Powell: A heavy discounting of outrageous crime in Conn.; teachers aren’t underpaid

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Next time the governor and state legislators boast about the decline in Connecticut's prison population, remember the recent report in the Hearst Connecticut newspapers about the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

By a vote of 2-1 after a hearing in January, the board approved parole for a Bridgeport man who had served only 26 years of a 60-year sentence for an especially outrageous crime in 1995. He kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from her home in Pennsylvania and took her to Bridgeport, where he imprisoned her for weeks, molesting her, stabbing her, burning her with a cigarette, and mutilating her, carving his name into her chest with broken glass.

Of course the perpetrator already had an extensive criminal record. For years after his conviction he denied the crime and brought fruitless appeals. He accepted responsibility only when seeking parole. 

Prosecutors opposed his application but the board granted it in large part because he had participated in various programs in prison. His victim said she did not oppose parole but is still recovering from her ordeal and just wanted it to be over.

Connecticut should want such hefty discounting of criminal justice to be over. But it won't be over any time soon.

While there is no constituency at the state Capitol for improving the ever-declining performance of students in Connecticut's public schools, there is a huge constituency for spending more money in the name of education even as student enrollment declines. That constituency is so large that no one at the Capitol dares to talk back to it even as it spouts nonsense.

More nonsense came the other day from Kate Dias, president of the state's largest teacher union, the Connecticut Education Association. "The critical thing to remember," Dias told education money seekers at the Capitol, "is we've never fully funded education."

But exactly what is "fully funded"? Dias didn't say, but "fully funded" seems to mean whatever the teacher unions want.

If education was "fully funded," Dias added, "my teachers wouldn't have a starting salary of $48,000. ... We've never actually done the really hard things that we need to do that would allow our teachers, our pre-K, everyone to make reasonable middle-class wages in Connecticut."

Teachers in Connecticut aren't middle class? According to the CEA's national affiliate, the National Education Association, the average teacher salary in Connecticut is $81,000, which doesn't count excellent benefits and much time off during the summer.

And if Dias is sore about an average starting salary of $48,000, that may be the fault of teacher unions themselves for negotiating contracts that allocate most increases in school spending to people who are already employed and union members. Why raise salaries for people who aren't paying union dues yet?

Where is the elected official or political candidate who dares to ask how increases in education spending correlate with student performance, or how student performance correlates with anything beyond family income and parenting? Any such elected official or candidate soon would find scores of teachers in his district vigorously supporting his opponent's campaign.

Indeed, that seems about to happen to state Sen. Douglas McCrory, D-Windsor, an administrator with the Capitol Region Education Council, who -- remarkably, since he is a Democrat -- may be the General Assembly's most vocal advocate of charter schools and school choice.

McCrory is being challenged for renomination by a school board member in his home town and by an official of a union that represents school employees in Hartford. 

More than improving education, McCrory's opponents may want to make sure that schools don't ever have to compete for students -- that school choice is limited to families who can afford private schools.

Special interests are political machines that are very good at getting their people to vote. The public interest has no political machine.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).