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.
This infographic from the Connecticut School Finance Project details how a well-functioning school finance system is made up of several pieces. The infographic describes how each piece is important to providing students and schools with the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. When a piece of the puzzle is missing, students, schools, and communities are negatively impacted.
Connecticut currently identifies low-income students based on students’ eligibility for the USDA’s National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. Connecticut students who are eligible for these programs are generally referred to as being eligible for free and reduced price lunch, or “FRPL.” Despite the simplicity of using FRPL-eligibility to identify low-income students, researchers warn FRPL-eligibility may be an inaccurate proxy for low-income students, and instead, they suggest low-income students be identified using multiple income-verified measures. The need for a more accurate, verifiable proxy for low-income students is particularly important given the increase of schools and districts qualifying and participating in Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) of the federal Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. Since its introduction, CEP participation rates in Connecticut have increased annually and are likely to continue increasing as more and more eligible schools and districts adopt the program.
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.