During its 2025 regular legislative session, the Connecticut General Assembly made a number of changes to how the State funds special education, including the creation of a new formulaic grant to support special education services.
The District Repair and Improvement Project (DRIP) program is a new program that provides reimbursement grants to school districts for minor capital repairs and improvements to public school buildings, grounds, and infrastructure.
Glossary compiled by the School and State Finance Project defining terms related to school funding in Connecticut.
This brief details how an inflation-based adjustment to the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula's foundation amount could be implemented to mitigate the annual increasing costs of providing educational services. The potential adjustment would alleviate districts’ reliance on local sources to cover rising costs and would ensure all districts have the resources they need to properly operate their schools and provide their students with a high-quality education when economic changes occur.
The State of Connecticut has several budget controls, commonly referred to as “fiscal guardrails,” which it has committed to bondholders to maintain through at least fiscal year 2028. These budget controls include the bond cap, revenue cap, spending cap, and volatility cap.
One learning need currently not weighted for in the ECS formula is special education. This summary document provides an overview how adding a weight for students with disabilities to the ECS formula would benefit students, the cost of adding such a weight, and other states that currently weight for special education in their funding formulas.