As districts work to meet increasing student needs and maintain high-quality educational programs, the purchasing power of state and local dollars has eroded under the cumulative effects of persistent inflation. To understand how rising costs are impacting students and teachers in the classroom, we conducted interviews with leaders across 18 school districts.
The Connecticut School Finance Project has updated the 2006 District Reference Groups to determine what they would look like today. The 2016 DRGs were determined through calculations by the Connecticut School Finance Project and are not official classifications produced by the Connecticut State Department of Education. While the 2016 DRGs listed are not official, they were calculated using the same cluster analysis methodology and variables used by the CSDE in 2006 to determine the current DRGs.
Each day, more than 68,700 of the students who pass through the doors of Connecticut’s public schools require special education services, making up 13 percent of the state's total public school enrollment. The individual learning needs of these students are wide-ranging and unique. As a result of these wide-ranging needs, the resources required to provide students with a “free appropriate public education” vary significantly, and often pose difficult planning and financial questions to Connecticut’s public schools. The report examines the special education finance systems of all 50 states and finds Connecticut is one of only four states in the country that does not have a system for funding all special education students.