Bridgeport Bites The Dust Again

Unfortunately, every time we write about Bridgeport, it is never good news.

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Well the Good news is chronic absenteeism is down, but just a little bit.

The real news is Bridgeport Schools and our State Government is failing the citizens of Bridgeport and their futures.

Bridgeport has among the worst public schools in the state of Connecticut, reading at 160 out of 165 school systems.

Chronic Absenteeism

The schools are so bad that a significant percentage of the students are chronically absent. In October 2024, the chronic absentee rate was 32%, and in 2025 is now down to 22.6%. That means one out of every four students in Bridgeport doesn’t even bother to come to school on a regular basis.

School Enrollment Down - Where Did the kids go?

School enrollment has also dropped by about 4,000 students between the 2023 - 2024 and the 2024 - 2025 school year. It is highly unlikely that the school age population dropped in this same period of time.

No Board Oversight & Financial Irregularities

According to Inside Investigator, CSDE, a contractor, completed an audit of the Bridgeport public school system. The audit confirmed there was a lack of board oversight, as well as funding, unusual budget transfers, misclassification expenditures, and inefficiencies. That certainly sounds like mismanagement, embezzlements, or and other types of corrupt behavior.

Unsafe Schools

In addition to poor educational quality, Bridgeport schools are unsafe. During the 2024 -2025 school year, there were 20,390 incidents involving physical and verbal confrontations and 14,002 fighting and battery incidents. Approximately 70% of the Bridgeport school budget comes from the state of Connecticut.

Betrayal of the Students

We, the taxpayers of Connecticut, are funding a school where students choose not to attend for a host of reasons, including their safety, and poor education quality. Connecticut is betraying the people of Bridgeport.

While there are so many reasons for these epic failures, it is clear that incompetence and poor oversight are leading contributors to this problem and bad government is likely the problem itself.

Bridgeport schools cannot continue on this destructive path to the future members of our state economy without a massive intervention to solve these problems and provide the citizens of Bridgeport and parents with the opportunity for their children to have a meaningful education and be successful.

Education is the Real Emergency – Not Housing

The state legislature, ruled by the party of Democrat Governor Lamont, has been so quick to pass emergency housing bills, but they overlook the real emergency. How can you not consider school failures an emergency? Yet, our state legislators are unwilling to do anything to intervene and advocate on behalf of Bridgeport’s students.

Perhaps the Democrats controlled state legislature is afraid that an educated Bridgeport population where students are trained and have opportunities to get jobs and live better lives would no longer vote Democrat, thus eroding their political stranglehold on the state.

We have previously written that such a poorly run school system is racism and that the democrat party is failing the children See Your Child Your Choice – Democrats are the Real Racists by failing our school children where betrayal of the minorities that live in Bridgeport the opportunities for better life is the real racism.

What Can We Do?.

We must call out these failures and we must stand up and make sure that the state that funds Bridgeport schools actually intervenes and takes charge to make this system work for the citizens of Bridgeport.

Talk is cheap. Action is not.

For Attorney General Tong, It is time to stop patting yourself on the back for lawsuits to President Trump and launch real investigations into these irregularities within our state.