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Historic $150 Million Investment for K-12 Public Education

During the 2023 legislative session, our team led the charge for a historic investment in Connecticut's students, schools, and communities. Through our advocacy, data and policy work, and community engagement efforts, we secured an additional $150 million for Connecticut public schools in fiscal year 2025. This is the largest single investment in K-12 education in Connecticut in the past 10 years, and the second largest investment in state history.


The historic $150 million investment will make real, meaningful differences in the lives of students, families, and educators across Connecticut by supporting critical staff positions, funding after-school programs, providing mental health resources, and expanding tutoring and student support services. The additional funds will also help communities avoid school layoffs and steep property tax hikes when federal COVID-relief aid expires in September 2024.

To make this historic investment a reality, we worked collaboratively with legislative leadership and policymakers on both sides of the aisle; engaged and activated superintendents, teachers, municipal leaders, and board of education members; and developed and executed a successful media campaign to draw attention to the need for greater education funding.

Our Community Engagement team also activated parents and stakeholders from around the state to urge their legislators and the governor to invest in Connecticut's public schools. As a result of our community engagement efforts, 465 pieces of legislative testimony were submitted, and hundreds of emails were sent to legislators and the governor, in support of greater, more equitable education funding.

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Quicker Path to Full Funding for School Districts

In 2023 we worked with legislators to accelerate full funding of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant and deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to local public school districts faster than previously scheduled. As a result of our advocacy and policy work, we were able to speed up full funding of the ECS grant by two years — from fiscal year 2028 to fiscal year 2026 — which will drive an additional $324 million to public schools throughout Connecticut.


Since fiscal year 2019, the ECS grant has been phased in over time with historically underfunded districts not scheduled to receive their fully funded grant amount until fiscal year 2028. This means students who were in kindergarten when the ECS grant phase-in schedule began would not receive the full, equitable state education funding they were entitled to until they were in high school. Instead, these students and their school districts only received a portion of the funds that the ECS formula said they needed.

This long wait denied hundreds of thousands of students the funding, resources, and opportunities they desperately needed. During the 2023 legislative session, we led the effort to accelerate the phase-in schedule of the ECS grant and ensure students across Connecticut receive the full amount of funding they are entitled to. Because of our work and advocacy, the ECS grant's phase-in schedule was sped up by two years and the grant will now be fully funded — for the first time in decades — in fiscal year 2026.

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A More Equitable Education Funding Formula

Since the School and State Finance Project was founded, one of our primary goals has been to improve Connecticut’s education finance system for all students and communities by creating a more equitable, logical, and transparent system. Throughout the Connecticut General Assembly’s 2017 legislative sessions, we worked with the Office of the Governor and all four legislative caucuses to revise the state’s Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula, which is the method the State of Connecticut has established to distribute approximately $2+ billion in state education funding to local public school districts.


Our work for a more equitable funding formula included modeling dozens of potential revisions to determine their impacts on the state budget and individual towns. Our staff also consistently met and communicated with legislators about the need for a new, equitable ECS formula, and created talking points and presentations for lawmakers to use.

Through our work and the technical assistance we provided to the Office of the Governor and the General Assembly, our team helped spark the conversation that ultimately resulted in the legislature passing a new, more equitable ECS formula as part of the state’s biennial budget. As a result of the new formula, local public school districts, for the first time in years, are now funded more equitably and receive state education aid based on the needs of their students and communities rather than through arbitrary and political block grants.

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Building Relationships & Community Knowledge

Throughout our organization's history, our Community Engagement team has held hundreds of meetings and workshops with communities across the state, presented to thousands of individuals, and built a contact list of committed individuals across 60+ cities and towns. Through this work, our organization has built genuine, positive relationships in communities across Connecticut, increased knowledge and engagement around issues of education and state finance, and given people the skills to effectively add their voices to policy discussions


As a result of this engagement work, community members have grown significantly more knowledgeable about how Connecticut funds its public schools and have become more involved in advocating for equitable funding for all students.

These deep relationships and the presence of engaged communities has led us to expand our education offerings and presentations, and we now offer an array of workshops that cover everything from how the economy works and impacts state finance to how to write an op-ed or piece of legislative testimony. Additionally, in response to students expressing interest in learning more about education finance, we developed a K-12 curriculum that has been utilized regularly.

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Greater Funding for Multilingual Learners & High-Need Districts

From 2010 to 2020, Connecticut’s multilingual learner population grew by nearly 13,000 students while the state's total student enrollment declined significantly. This increase in student need also brought along a need for greater resources to support multilingual learner students, who are also commonly referred to as English Learners or English Language Learners. During the Connecticut General Assembly's 2021 legislative session, we responded to these growing needs by working with legislators and partner organizations to adjust some of the ECS formula's weights and thresholds to drive greater resources to multilingual learner students and economically disadvantaged districts.


As part of Connecticut's state budget for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the General Assembly passed our recommendation and increased the ECS formula's weight for multilingual learners from 15% to 25%. This weight increase results in greater funding to school districts to be spent on equitable learning opportunities and resources for multilingual learners.

The legislature also adopted another one of our recommendations and increased the ECS formula's concentrated poverty weight from 5% to 15% and lowered the eligibility threshold for the weight from 75% to 60%. As a result of these changes, greater funding is provided to districts with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students, and more districts are eligible for this additional funding.

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Interactive Revenue Calculator for State Comptroller

Everyone knows they pay taxes, but what’s not always clear is how state tax systems work and how tax policy changes impact the revenue states collect. In February 2018, Connecticut’s State Comptroller aimed to fix this when they partnered with us to design and develop an online interactive, public-facing revenue tool that would allow users to calculate the impact of selected revenue policies and changes.


Our team developed and launched a new and improved Do-it-Yourself (DIY) Revenue Calculator for the Comptroller’s website that allows users to 1) specify changes in existing state tax rates, 2) eliminate existing state tax exemptions and credits, and 3) implement new state taxes and fees to change the estimated amount and sources of state revenue.

Additionally, our team created a public frequently asked questions document about the Calculator as well as an accompanying full methodology document outlining the tool’s calculations and sources. Our team continues to update the Calculator with the latest revenue estimates, policy changes, and tax proposals so the tool remains up-to-date and accurate.

Since its launch in June 2018, the revamped Calculator has been viewed thousands of times and has made it easier for the general public to see how Connecticut’s tax system works and what policy changes mean for their wallets and the state’s coffers.

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The First Interactive Look at Connecticut's State Budget

Navigating Connecticut's state budget is no easy task. At nearly 600 pages long with hundreds of line items and numerous complex statutory changes, the state budget is far from a light read and can easily become overwhelming and confusing. We aimed to fix this by launching a Budget Analysis Tool in September 2019, the first comprehensive, interactive tool designed to help users of all knowledge and skill levels navigate the state budget and better understand how state revenue is raised and spent.


The Budget Analysis Tool allowed users to explore Connecticut's biennial state budget for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 and examine how the state's revenues and expenditures have changed over the years. The interactive tool also gave users the chance to easily find information about agency spending, specific line items, and different revenue streams.

The Tool also highlighted fixed costs in the state budget and offered a look into aid provided to each Connecticut city and town. Stakeholders from across the state, including legislators and local policymakers, found the Budget Analysis Tool useful and a quick and accessible way to find budget information.

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Hosting Connecticut's First Pension Academy

In January 2019, we expanded on our role as a resource to policymakers and stakeholders by organizing and hosting the first Connecticut Pension Academy with the League of Women Voters of Connecticut. Held at the Connecticut State Capitol, the event was wildly successful and drew a standing-room only crowd of roughly 200 people as well as an audience watching a live broadcast of the event online.


The daylong, nonpartisan event was dedicated to examining the State of Connecticut's unfunded pension liabilities and their impacts on the state budget, while learning about potential ways policymakers can improve the financial viability of Connecticut's public pension systems and address some of the looming financial challenges facing the state.

Open to state and local policymakers as well as the general public, the Pension Academy featured some of the nation's preeminent experts on public pension design and funding.

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