On May 7, 2024, the General Assembly passed H.B. 5523, a budget stabilization bill that appropriates funds for fiscal year 2025 and makes a number of different policy changes to K-12 education and other areas. Along with maintaining the $150 million in additional funding for K-12 education in FY 2025 that was allotted as part of the state budget passed last year, the bill overhauls how Connecticut distributes state education funding to school districts.
This policy briefing provides a summary of the academic research on the benefits and drawbacks of state-led efforts to encourage, or require, school districts with low enrollments or density to consolidate. Consolidation of school districts has existed throughout the 20th century. Between 1940 and 2013, the number of school districts in the United States decreased from approximately 117,000 to approximately 14,000. This policy briefing also summarizes Vermont’s school district consolidation efforts with a specific focus on the content and impact of Act 46, passed in 2015, and Act 49, passed in 2017.
Two pieces of legislation, Conn. Acts 12-116, passed by the Connecticut General Assembly in 2012, and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 2015, require Connecticut to take steps toward greater transparency in education spending. The following policy briefing provides an update on the implementation status of these pieces of legislation, and examines how they impact transparency in school finance.
This report from the Connecticut School Finance Project examines how statewide school finance systems can be developed to meet the resource needs of schools of the future, and support public school districts implementing, or seeking to implement, approaches to systemic educational change.
In an effort to provide valuable background information about the components of an effective school finance system, and offer options for policymakers to consider, the Connecticut School Finance Project created a comprehensive Funding Formula Guidebook. The Funding Formula Guidebook examines how Connecticut can achieve fair funding for its more than 540,000 students and details a framework for an equitable school finance system.
School transportation is costly and those costs continue to rise. The national average, per-pupil expenditure for transportation of students at public expense has increased 30 percent since 2000, in cost-adjusted dollars. In Connecticut, the average per-pupil cost of student transportation is $885.78, which has increased 42.2 percent since 2000. At the same time as costs have increased, state-level funding for transportation has decreased in Connecticut, and in 2016-17 the state legislature eliminated the majority of state funding for public school transportation. In order to better understand best practices in school transportation requirements and funding structures that could possibly be used in Connecticut, this report analyzes school transportation in several comparison states: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.