In a 4-3 ruling, the Connecticut Supreme Court reversed in part, and affirmed in part, a 2016 ruling from Hartford Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher focused on Connecticut's school finance system. The Supreme Court ruled the way Connecticut allocates state education dollars, and how much the State spends on public education, is constitutional and does not violate Article Eighth § 1 of the Connecticut Constitution.

On Wednesday, February 5, 2020, Governor Ned Lamont introduced his recommended budget adjustments for fiscal year 2021 for the General Assembly to consider. This analysis from the School and State Finance Project details the state education funding and school finance changes contained in Governor Lamont’s recommended state budget adjustments for FY 2021, and compares the state education funding in the governor’s budget adjustments with funding for FYs 2020 and 2021 contained in the current biennial state budget.

In 1996, in a 4-3 decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the state had an affirmative obligation to provide Connecticut's school children with a substantially equal educational opportunity and that this constitutionally guaranteed right encompasses the access to a public education, which is not substantially and materially impaired by racial and ethnic isolation. The Court further concluded that school districting, based upon town and city boundary lines, is unconstitutional. As a result of the decision, the Connecticut State Legislature passed legislation in 1997 encouraging voluntary actions toward racial integration. However, since then, there have been a number stipulated agreements between the case's plaintiffs and the State of Connecticut to ensure the Connecticut Supreme Court's ruling is followed.

This presentation from the School and State Finance Project examines the state's school finance system as a whole and the challenges it presents. Included in the presentation is information about Connecticut's 11 school funding formulas, the state's varying property tax rates, and the funding and population disparities among school districts across the state.

This one-pager from the School and State Finance Project details how Connecticut could use a needs-capacity formula to distribute non-education municipal aid to the state's cities and towns. A needs-capacity formula is based on a municipality's socioeconomic and physical characteristics and considers its costs of delivering a common level of service and its capacity to raise revenue to pay for those services. Under a needs-capacity formula, municipalities with the greatest level of fiscal disparity would receive a greater level of state funding, while municipalities with the capacity to pay for services through their own revenue raising capacities receive less or no state funding.