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James Mol
Sources: adopted town budgets FY2027; Connecticut State Department of Education, district profiles, expenditures by revenue source 2023-24.
In one Minute
$11,525Â is the reason. That is the per-student amount Connecticut's school funding formula starts from. It was set in 2013, was never based on what schools actually spend, and has never been changed. Costs are up 42 percent since.
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Whether or not you have a child in school, education is the largest thing your property tax bill pays for. And whatever you think of the size of state government, the $2.46 billion Connecticut spends on school aid will be spent somewhere. The only question is whether our towns get their share.
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Connecticut finished fully funding its formula in 2026, for the first time in state history. That was worth doing. What nobody fixed is the number the formula starts from.
What has not changed
Windsor Locks has received exactly $5,225,299 in state education aid every year since 2021. Suffield receives less in plain dollars today than it did in 2019.
Source: School and State Finance Project, ECS grants by town, FY2019–FY2027. After inflation, both towns have lost roughly a fifth of their state education funding across these years.
Not a spending problem
Suffield spends $21,171 per student, less than the state average and less than 112 of Connecticut's 165 districts. Adjusted for inflation, all three of our districts spend less on schools today than in 2013.
Source: CSDE Net Current Expenditures per Pupil, 2013-14 through 2024-25; CPI-U. Per-student cost rose because enrolment fell 17 percent in Suffield and 15 percent in Windsor Locks, not because budgets grew.
The full story
A town's grant is the foundation amount, multiplied by its need-weighted student count, multiplied by its Base Aid Ratio. Need weights add 30 percent for each low-income student and 25 percent for each multilingual learner. The Base Aid Ratio is the share the state covers, set by comparing the town to the state median on property wealth per capita, weighted 70 percent, and household income, weighted 30 percent.
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Every input in that calculation is refreshed every year except one. The foundation amount has been $11,525 since 2013. Indexed to inflation it would be about $16,361. Actual per-student cost in our towns runs from $21,171 to $24,299.
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Windsor Locks shows the 70/30 weighting doing damage. It has three times Suffield's poverty rate and about $35,000 less household income, and receives a lower aid ratio, because the warehouses and hangars around Bradley are counted as the town's wealth while its households count at 30 percent.
Now a quarter of every school budget here, and growing. The 2025 law created a dedicated grant and real oversight of private providers, then funded the grant at 16 cents on the dollar: our three towns receive about $157,000 against the roughly $998,000 it describes. The Excess Cost grant for the highest-need students pays about 70 percent of what is owed.
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Washington committed in 1975 to pay 40 percent of the extra cost of special education. It pays about 11. That is one of the few places a state representative's relationships with our congressional delegation translate directly into property tax relief.
Suffield is planning a new middle school, East Granby is weighing a consolidated school, and Windsor Locks has projects coming. How much the state pays is decided by rules written in Hartford. The statute reimburses new construction about five points below renovation. Bonuses of fifteen points exist for projects designed with in-district special education or early childhood space, but only if a project is designed for them before the architect is hired.
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Largest of all, the legislature writes individual towns into the school construction act every year. In the 2025 and 2026 acts, Ansonia was granted 87 percent for a new middle school, New London 95, and a dozen towns received named increases. Trumbull's representative secured 44 percent against a formula rate of 24, worth about $27 million. Suffield does not appear in either act. That is what a representative with a project in the district is for.
Suffield High's program serves 173 students from across the region and is Connecticut's farm workforce pipeline. The state caps what sending towns may pay and funds its own share at 42 percent of what its formula calculates, so one town carries a gap that should be shared. A program this good deserves a permanent formula in law, not a budget line Suffield defends alone. Regional AgriScience facilities are reimbursed at 80 percent, a rate no ordinary project comes near.
This district has been represented in Hartford for more than a decade by someone who works hard and is at nearly every event in these towns. That is real. The question in front of voters is not effort. It is results, and results in a legislature depend on where you sit and who will move a bill with you.
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Committee seats are assigned by choice. In more than a decade, this district has never held one on Education, where the foundation amount, the wealth measure and the special education grants are all written, while education drives well over half of every town budget here.
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In April 2026 the House Republican caucus proposed a $365 million school aid plan. The idea was not unreasonable. The money never arrived, because a caucus in the minority cannot pass a budget, and because the plan distributed through the existing percentages without touching the foundation, it would have left the underlying problem exactly where it is.
A $1.3 million decision, made next year
Connecticut has set aside $152.2 million more for schools in 2028 and has not decided how to distribute it. The Blue-Ribbon Commission on school funding reports January 15, 2027; turning that into law is months of committee work in the session starting that month.
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Suffield and East Granby currently receive slightly more than the formula says they should, and the state has protected that only through 2028. What happens next depends on one choice.
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Calculated as foundation × Base Aid Ratio × need-weighted students using the state's published FY2027 inputs; reproduces Connecticut's published entitlements exactly. Windsor Locks shows no loss in the first row because its Alliance District protection is permanent.
For more than a decade this district has had no seat on the committee where that choice gets made.
What I will do in Hartford
Serve on the Education Committee, and deliver the 2028 money by raising the foundation and indexing it, not by cutting the protection Suffield and East Granby rely on.
Fully fund the special education grants, and design our building projects to capture every reimbursement bonus the law now allows.
Write a permanent AgriScience funding formula into law.