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.
Despite state charter schools receiving most of their funding through state sources, local school districts may still be impacted financially by the opening and operation of a charter school. This briefing focuses on the potential financial implications of state charter schools on local school districts.
The Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula is the method the State of Connecticut has established to distribute over $2.36 billion annually in state education funding to local and regional public school districts. This one-pager details the current components of the ECS formula, which was last revised during the 2023 regular legislative session.
These frequently asked questions documents provide more information about FY 2025 funding for different public school types. Included in each document is an overview of funding from the previous year, details on how funding will be allocated in FY 2025, and information about funding in future years.
This spreadsheet contains a town-by-town list of estimated Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grants for fiscal year 2025 with comparisons to FY 2024 ECS funding levels.
This model of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula details the grants and phase-in schedule, from FY 2025 to FY 2032, for each Connecticut local school district. Additionally, this model allows users to edit formula inputs to model different, hypothetical variations of the ECS formula.