by Karla Ciaglo CTNewsJunkie
HARTFORD, CT — For more than a decade, the per-pupil funding baseline at the heart of Connecticut’s school aid formula has not budged. Senate Democrats and a coalition of municipal leaders gathered Wednesday to argue that the freeze can no longer hold.
Senate Bill 7 would raise the “foundation grant” in the state’s Education Cost Sharing formula — the per-student baseline used to calculate how much aid flows to every school district — from $11,525 today to $15,500 by 2030, a 35% increase. After that, the grant would be indexed to economic conditions, adjusting automatically rather than waiting on the legislature to act.
The phased increases would add $58 million in new state education aid in fiscal year 2027, scaling to $233 million in 2028, $422 million in 2029 and roughly $618 million annually by 2030.
The proposal faces a significant obstacle: Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget does not include an increase to the foundation grant, setting up a likely fight during budget negotiations later this session.
“If that number had been indexed to inflation when it was enacted, it would be about $15,500 today,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, at a press conference held ahead of the Education Committee’s public hearing on the bill. The foundation amount, he noted, has been frozen since 2013.
Looney framed the legislation as a two-step fix modeled on the state’s minimum wage law — first raise the floor, then tie future growth to inflation so the figure doesn’t erode again. He also cast the bill as a property tax issue: because municipalities rely on local property taxes to fund schools, wide disparities in local wealth translate directly into disparities in what children receive in the classroom.
The contrast, he said, is stark. In Greenwich, the equalized net grand list — a measure of taxable property wealth — exceeds $1 million per capita. In many Connecticut communities, that figure hovers near $80,000 to $90,000.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said the bill builds on the legislature’s 2017 overhaul of the ECS formula, which added new weights for student poverty and multilingual learners and phased in aid increases over several years. Lawmakers later added roughly $150 million to accelerate that phase-in. But the foundation grant itself — the bedrock number underlying all of those calculations — was never touched.
“It is finally time to fix the foundation,” Duff said.
Education Committee Co-Chair Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, who spent his career as an educator before entering politics, pointed to communities in his region — Hartford, Bloomfield and Windsor — as examples of underfunded districts that would see significant new resources under the bill.
“Each community has fixed costs,” he said. “If the state doesn’t step up, it falls on local taxpayers.”
McCrory also noted that the state’s Budget Reserve Fund, commonly called the Rainy Day Fund, exceeds $4 billion. That suggests the state has the fiscal capacity to act even in an uncertain budget environment, he said.
More than a dozen mayors and first selectmen stood alongside Senate Democrats, offering ground-level accounts of the funding gap in their communities.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker put a number to it: his district serves more than 18,000 students but employs just 46 school counselors — roughly one for every 396 students.
“Student needs have far outpaced the current level of state funding,” he said.
Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons called the bill “critical to helping keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living” and Norwalk Mayor Barbara Smyth said local budgets are straining to absorb growing demands for special education, mental health supports and multilingual learner programs.
During the press conference, a parent in attendance raised concerns that students with disabilities receive the same base per-pupil funding as other students despite far higher costs — an issue Looney acknowledged, saying the state’s excess cost reimbursement system, which only kicks in after special education expenses exceed 4.5 times the $11,525 per-pupil baseline, may need further review.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, answers questions before the House special session on Nov. 12, 2025. Credit: Donald Eng / CTNewsJunkie
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora R-North Branford, and Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, said they welcomed attention to Connecticut’s property tax burden but urged caution as lawmakers consider changes to the Education Cost Sharing formula. In a joint statement, the Republicans said increases in ECS funding could trigger the state’s Minimum Budget Requirement, potentially requiring municipalities to raise local education spending and property taxes.
Property taxes, they said, are a major driver of the state’s unaffordability crisis and education funding is at the heart of property taxes, they said.
“More state aid shouldn’t mean higher local tax bills,” they said. “We can fund our schools and cut property taxes. That’s the standard any solution must meet.”