School budgets and state mandates

Why does Connecticut impose a minimum budget requirement(MBR)for schools? The MBR prevents towns from reducing school budgets by greater than 1% year over year. This forces school administrators to look for ways to spend money they don't need and drives up the property taxes of communities that have declining enrollments. More funds are directed to schools while other critical town services are cut in order to keep property taxes under control while maintaining the MBR at the state's required level. This makes no sense.