W. Hartford, CT: 20% of kids receive special ed services; $14.4M more for SPED

Mar 5, 2025, We-ha: West Hartford Superintendent Proposes $215.2 Million Budget for 2025-26 Academic Year  https://we-ha.com/west-hartford-superintendent-215-2-million-budget-for-2025-26/ 

Superintendent Paul Vicinus’ proposed budget for the West Hartford Public Schools’ 2025-2026 academic year includes a $14.4 million (7.2%) overall increase with special education costs, including tuition and transportation, salaries, and medical expenses as major drivers. 

The West Hartford Board of Education will spend the next four weeks carefully scrutinizing specific details of the proposed 2025-26 school budget at workshops, and will also hold a public hearing and participate in several community conversations along with the Town Council before making recommendations and voting to adopt the budget on Tuesday April 1.

The proposed 2025-26 budget presented by Superintendent Paul Vicinus on Tuesday night totals $215,226,800, representing an overall increase of $14,422,944 (7.2%) over the $200,803,856 budget adopted for the 2024-25 academic year.

The major budget drivers are similar to what the district has faced over the past several years – increases in the cost of out-of-district tuition to support special education needs, transportation, salary increases required by collective bargaining agreements, and this year an estimated 10% increase in medical insurance premiums. A projected – and growing – shortfall in the state’s reimbursement of special education excess has a greater impact this year.

The roll-forward budget – looking at keeping the exact same programs and services and the exact same number of people next year as this year – would result in a $16 million (8.0%) increase, driven by salary increases that are part of negotiated collective bargaining agreements, benefit costs, contractual transportation costs, services for students with special needs including out-of-district placement, and inflation.

Vicinus’ adjustments to that roll forward budget represent a net reduction of $1,55,175 (0.8%), including an overall reduction in 8.2 positions. That number is impacted by enrollment shifts, special education program delivery, and a reduction in non-classroom positions and overhead.

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Who are we?

Today, that generation is the 9,135 students in the district, Vicinus said.

“One in four live in a home where a language other than English is spoken … and one in 10 are English language learners themselves,” Vicinus said. In addition, he noted that nearly one in two are students of color, nearly one in three are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and one in five receive some type of special education service.

 “The diversity is dramatic,” he said, and the district’s culturally rich demographic is “at the core of the programming that we do.”

. . .The fastest growing pieces of the pie are tuition and transportation costs – the latter for based on contractual costs for transportation to the town’s schools as well as for out-of-district placements.

The costs related to special education have continued to rise, while at the same time statewide the overall excess cost reimbursement funding has remained flat, resulting in a lower percentage reimbursement to districts across the state as the pool of funds is distributed.

While there had been celebration of $40 million in additional funding passed by the legislature last week to assist with a shortfall in the current year’s budget  – which will likely be realized despite the governor’s line-item veto – and while the governor has committed to an extra $40 million in excess cost reimbursement in the 2026-27 fiscal year, “currently there is no funding plan for the excess cost reimbursement in the 2025-26 year,” Vicinus said.

Out-of-district tuition expenses are estimated at nearly $3.7 million, an increase of 39.6% driven by the number of outplacements, increasing tuition rates, and the reimbursement shortfall. Transportation, which includes the contract for regular buses as well as out-of-district special education busing, is budgeted to increase by $1.3 million (12.2%).

It’s not the number of special education students receiving the out-of-district services that’s having a huge impact, Vicinus said, but rather the skyrocketing cost of those services at private facilities. While as many students as possible are served in-district – and because West Hartford is larger than other districts it is able to operate certain programs such as STRIVE – there is an obligation to provide needed services even if they are unavailable in town. There is talk at the state level of implementing controls on tuition, but that won’t be in time to impact the upcoming academic year. . . .

 “That shortfall is one of the most significant drivers that’s outside of our control,” Vicinus said. There are other towns facing the same type of situation, and while budgets are in various stages of review throughout the state, he said one district is proposing an 11.2% overall increase driven by special education costs, which is a crisis. . . .