New Haven Independent: Suburbs Profit Off New Haven’s Magnets

Suburban school districts are being paid millions of dollars for students that they don’t teach, while sticking New Haven taxpayers with the bill for educating their kids.

Thanks to a funding formula that experts say is broken, the state has been paying out money to the municipalities where students live, rather than where they go to school.

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Katie Roy, the executive director of the Connecticut School Finance Project, said that New Haven is leaving millions of dollars on the table — money that, she added, the city shouldn’t have to hunt down in the first place.

“The state shouldn’t be sending money to the sending district that doesn’t educate these students, then leave it up to the receiving district to go after that money and decide how much to charge. That creates this inter-town relational problem,” she said. “In my opinion, if a kid lives in Hamden but goes to school in New Haven, we should not be giving the money to Hamden, then telling New Haven, ‘You have to go get that money.’”

Read the full article at https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/suburbs_ecs_inter-district_magnets_tuition/