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.
Public Act 25-93 contains a variety of provisions designed to strengthen special education services, expand early childhood programming, revise reporting requirements, and improve student discipline and oversight. This analysis details the changes to education funding and policies contained in Public Act 25-93 and the impact of these changes on students, school districts, and the state.
Public Act 25-67 contains provisions designed to enhance oversight and increase funding for special education services in Connecticut, with the goal of promoting greater consistency and quality in the provision of services to students with disabilities across Connecticut. This analysis details the changes to special education funding and policies contained in Public Act 25-67 and their impact on students and schools.
Understanding how public school districts are spending education dollars is essential for ensuring Connecticut’s investments in K-12 education are transparent, equitable, and effective. This analysis explores how spending has changed over the last five years, breaks down expenditures by function and object, and highlights key trends in spending for special education services.
The Excess Cost grant is the State of Connecticut’s method for sharing in the expense for students who have extraordinary special education needs and associated costs. During the 2023 legislative session, the General Assembly increased the appropriated amount of the Excess Cost grant and amended the grant’s formula for reimbursing school districts.
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.