Invest Intelligently

Why This Recommendation Is Necessary

In order to ensure that every Connecticut school and district has the funding it needs to provide an exceptional education for our students, we must build an effective and transparent way of funding public education. Students with the same needs should consistently receive the same level of funding, regardless of the public school they attend.

Connecticut must also reexamine and reallocate grant funds towards specific efforts aimed at improving achievement for low-income students. All school districts must track their expenses using the same categories so that we can compare how funds are spent between districts, and districts should consider sharing or consolidating services to realize cost efficiencies. We should also seek to diversify our funding sources by applying for more federal and private grants to fund our schools.

• Redeploy Education Cost Sharing grants to phase in new funding, apply funding to charters and magnets, and allow money to follow the child;
• Reallocate categorized grants so that funding supports specific efforts aimed at improving achievement for low-income students;
• Revise the process of tracking education expenditures to improve transparency and public accountability;
• Encourage school districts to consolidate various operations and share services in order to stretch their dollars; and
• Increase efforts to gain federal and private grants to drive excellence in our schools