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.
Excess Cost grant reimbursement requests for FY 2024 significantly exceeded the $181 million appropriated for the grant in the state budget, and are expected to exceed the amount appropriated in FY 2025. Without additional funding, districts and towns will not receive the reimbursement levels specified in statute for the Excess Cost grant, resulting in less funding for all districts educating high-needs students with disabilities.
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 model provides the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula phase-in schedule, and estimated grants from FY 2020 to FY 2032, for each Connecticut municipality based on current inputs and variables.
The purpose of this tool is to provide comparisons between Connecticut towns based on the data used in the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula. The ECS formula is the method the State of Connecticut has established to distribute approximately $2.36 billion annually in state education funding to local and regional public 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.