Committee debates retooling adequacy grants: greater targeting for low‑income and property‑poor districts proposed

The Education Funding Committee examined a cluster of bills that would materially change the state’s school funding formula and the split between non‑targeted base adequacy and targeted grants such as the "extraordinary needs" and "hold‑harmless" allocations.

Why it matters: Committee members considered proposals to reallocate roughly $184 million in extraordinary‑needs funding plus approximately $47 million in hold‑harmless payments into a combination of a fiscal‑capacity disparity grant and a low‑income (free‑and‑reduced) grant — a structural change that could shift significant dollars between districts.

Representative William Ladd, committee chair, and other members walked through a spreadsheet model showing an approach that would raise the differentiated special‑education aid line from the current per‑student level to roughly $3,078 per average caseload, a change Department of Education staff estimated would add about $28 million in annual cost. Committee conversations described the full package modeled as increasing the formula by…