2. Increase the State's Share of Education Funding
Connecticut must rebalance the partnership of state and local education funding to ensure long-term adequacy, equity, and sustainability.
A. ECS
A revised ECS formula is needed with a ten-year plan, with an annual increasing foundation level, with an equal focus on town capacity and need, and a commitment to fund the costs of inflation as well as providing greater equity, and with no reductions for any town.
In order to keep pace with inflation, and continue to reduce spending inequities among towns, the State must be prepared to appropriate roughly $100 million additional, each year, not the recent historical average of merely $50 million on the $2.5 billion ECS appropriation.
The State of Connecticut has made very little progress in the last 20 years in increasing the state’s share of the total revenue for public elementary and secondary education. Hovering around 40%, annual increases from the State have barely kept pace with inflation and certainly have not provided for more equalized expenditures among school districts. While a good deal of more equity/fairness exists today than before Horton vs. Meskill (in 1975), the total State funds (from all grants and State funded programs) are not sufficient to accomplish the task of helping the poorest communities, with the most challenged students, to close the expenditure and achievement gaps. (Local funds support roughly 54% and federal funds 6%).
With the full funding of the current Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula and grant to take place in 2025-26, it is time to fix a new target that would move the State’s total share of the enterprise to be equal to that paid by the 169 towns of CT. Of course, the annual increase in the ECS grant (or its successor) should be reasonable, sustainable, and of a size in each community so that it will be used appropriately on educational opportunities and NOT on property tax relief.
B. Excess Costs and SEED grant
1. The State must commit to 100% funding of the Special Education Excess Cost grant over the next 2 to 3 years; paying the first payment of the grant – earlier in the school year (no later than October); and expecting an annual increase in this grant, after achieving 100% funding, in the tens of millions.
The single greatest failure of the last 25 years has been the inability or unwillingness to fund the promise of State support for the excess costs of special education students needing significant intervention. Virtually all of the additional costs of special education for the last two-plus decades have been covered by funds from 169 towns. Sufficient funding for special education has been a very broken promise by both the State and Federal governments. This failure has harmed both special and regular education and has eroded the public confidence in the total public education enterprise.
2. The State must make permanent the new SEED grant, and provide the inclusion of regional school districts (who were erroneously omitted).
The State of Connecticut has a legal and moral obligation to appropriately fund its public schools.
The State will reduce inequities in its school funding system and increase student achievement only if it genuinely commits to significantly increasing state aid as a percentage of all revenues for public schools. It is essential to the future of Connecticut Public Education.
CONNECTICUT CONTINUES TO RANK IN THE BOTTOM QUARTILE OF ALL STATES, IN THE PERCENTAGE OF SCHOOL REVENUES PROVIDED BY STATE GOVERNMENT.