Budget Snapshot: Appropriations Committee's Proposed Budget for FYs 2022 and 2023

On Wednesday, April 21, 2021, the Connecticut General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee voted their biennial budget proposal for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 out of committee. The proposed budget is the next step in the development of Connecticut's state budget, and contains policy changes and proposed appropriations to fund public education.

Key policy provisions in the Appropriations Committee's budget include:

• Continuing the phase-in of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula per current law over the next two fiscal years.
• Revising the ECS formula's need-student weights and thresholds to drive additional resources to towns for every English Learner (EL) student a town educates as well as to provide additional resources to towns that are deemed as having concentrated poverty.
• Extending the Open Choice program geographically by creating a pilot program for up to 50 students from Danbury and 50 students from Norwalk.
• Maintaining magnet school per-pupil grant amounts and adjusting the appropriation for annualized anticipated lapses and increased enrollment.
• Increasing the state charter school per-pupil grant from $11,250 to $11,525 per student to match the foundation amount used in the ECS formula.
• Increasing the state vocational agriculture per-pupil grant by $1,000.
• Delaying the transfer of the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System (CTECS) to a separate state agency until 2023, keeping CTECS as part of the budget for the State Department of Education for an additional fiscal year.

To help better understand how the Appropriations Committee budget proposal impacts education funding over the next two fiscal years, we put together a budget snapshot that provides a nonpartisan look at how the Committee's budget compares to current education spending levels, details the proposal's key policy changes, and provides estimated town-by-town runs for the ECS grant.