On April 22, 2025, the Connecticut General Assembly's Appropriations Committee introduced and passed its recommended state budget for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. This nonpartisan analysis details these changes to state education funding in the Appropriations Committee's budget, and provides a brief overview of the general fiscal outlook of the state budget and economy.
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.
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.