During its 2025 regular legislative session, the Connecticut General Assembly made a number of changes to how the State funds special education, including the creation of a new formulaic grant to support special education services.
Designed to help town and school district leaders plan for the future and address budgetary questions, these interactive models provide district-level and town-level funding estimates for the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, board of education magnet school grant, RESC magnet school grant, and Agricultural Science and Technology Education (ASTE) program grant.
This interactive model breaks down each aspect of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula and details how each town's grant is determined. Additionally, the model details each town's estimated projected ECS grants, according to the formula, from fiscal year 2026 to fiscal year 2034.
The Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula is the method the State of Connecticut has established to distribute over $2.46 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 2025 regular legislative session.
This model allows users to calculate future projected State Charter School grants based on the phase-in of weighted student funding for charter schools.
This combined tool provides comparisons between Connecticut towns based on the data used in the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula, and shows how each town's variables for the formula have changed over the past five years.