Shared Chart Catalog

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures, operating_expenditures, total_expenditures). Audited actuals. See the recipe at the bottom of this page.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures, operating_expenditures, education_expenditures), each indexed to its own first reported year.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures and operating_expenditures, each ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health).

Sources (two, on different bases): adopted — CT OPM Summary Financial Information from Adopted Municipal Budgets, pcg4-s5rc (total_expenditures, by fiscal_period_of_budget, where the budget year ends June 30 of the year shown); audited — CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures). The two fields share a name and do not share a definition.

Source: CT OPM Summary Financial Information from Adopted Municipal Budgets, pcg4-s5rc (property_tax_revenue, revenues_from_state_of_ct, revenues_from_federal, use_of_fund_balance and all_other_revenue, each ÷ total_revenue for the same budget year). Adopted budget only — a different basis from the audited actuals charted earlier on this page.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures), each town’s series divided by its own first-year value. The dashed median line is the median of the individual index lines shown behind it — the middle town’s cumulative growth in each year, not the growth of any one town across all years.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures), indexed per town. Group membership: CT State Department of Education District Reference Groups, 2006 assignment.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (operating_expenditures). Each town’s own series is indexed to 100 at its first reported year; the two dashed lines are the median taken across the peer towns’ indexed series, year by year. Group medians exclude the subject town.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures). Each town’s own series is indexed to 100 at its first reported year; the two dashed lines are the median taken across the peer towns’ indexed series, year by year. Group medians exclude the subject town. Towns that belong to a regional school district book their education costs differently from towns that run their own schools; that affects comparisons on this measure.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health). Nominal dollars, not inflation-adjusted. Population is the CT Department of Public Health estimate carried in the same dataset.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_expenditures ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health), most recent reported fiscal year. Towns the source does not report for that year are omitted rather than charted at zero. Differences between towns reflect what services a town delivers directly as well as how much it spends: education arrangements, regional districts, fire and ambulance service, water and sewer authorities all vary from town to town.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures ÷ total_expenditures). Each peer town’s own share is computed first; the two dashed lines are the median taken across those shares, year by year. Group medians exclude the subject town. All-funds basis, so grant-funded education spending is included in both the numerator and the total.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures ÷ school_enrollment_average). The denominator is average membership — the average number of students on the rolls across the year — not the single-day October headcount the state Department of Education reports. Each peer town’s own per-pupil figure is computed first; the two dashed lines are the median taken across those per-town figures, year by year, and exclude the subject town. Derived per-pupil, not CSDE Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil. Towns belonging to a regional school district for some or all grades report spending for the grades they run themselves, so their per-pupil figures are not on the same basis as a town running its own district across every grade.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures ÷ school_enrollment_average), each town indexed off its own first and last reported values rather than off fixed endpoints. Derived per-pupil, not CSDE Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil. Regional-district towns report the grades they run themselves, so their per-pupil basis differs from that of a town running its own district across every grade. A change in this measure can come from the spending side, the enrollment side, or both; the chart does not separate them.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures ÷ school_enrollment_average), most recent reported fiscal year. The denominator is average membership — the average number of students on the rolls across the year — not the single-day October headcount the state Department of Education reports. Towns the source does not report both fields for in that year are omitted rather than charted at zero. Derived per-pupil, not CSDE Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil. Towns in a regional school district for some or all grades report only the grades they run, so their bars are not on the same basis as a town running its own district across every grade; district size, grade span, transportation distance and special-education needs also differ from town to town.

Source: vertical axis — CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures ÷ school_enrollment_average), most recent reported fiscal year. Horizontal axis — US Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B19013 (median_household_income), most recent release carried in /data/ct_town_income.json. The two axes come from different sources on different year bases: the spending figure is a single audited fiscal year, while an ACS 5-year estimate pools five calendar years and is expressed in dollars of its release year, so the two are not aligned in time and the chart does not claim they are. The dashed line is a least-squares fit describing the pattern across the towns plotted; it is a description of those points, not a prediction for any town and not evidence that either measure causes the other. ACS figures carry margins of error that are not shown here. Derived per-pupil, not CSDE Net Current Expenditures Per Pupil; regional-district towns report only the grades they run.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (education_expenditures ÷ total_expenditures). Each peer town’s own share is computed first; the two dashed lines are the median taken across those shares, year by year, and exclude the subject town. This is an all-funds figure: state and federal education grants are counted in the education number and in the total alike. Those grants are not part of the adopted general-fund budget, so this share is not comparable to the education share of the budget a town adopts, which is a different measure and is not shown here.

Source: numerator — CT OPM, Estimates of Statutory Aid to Municipalities, sdcm-adr4 (education_cost_sharing). These are OPM estimates of statutory aid, not audited receipts; a town’s books can differ and the estimate is revised. The dataset carries only a few fiscal years and no education-aid history beyond them — the insight box below names them — so it supports a current-year comparison rather than a trend. Education Cost Sharing is one component of intergovernmental revenue, not the whole of it. Denominator — CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (school_enrollment_average). The two datasets do not cover the same fiscal years; the insight box names the aid year and the enrollment year separately rather than implying they match. Regional-district towns and towns running their own districts count students differently for this purpose, and the grant is set by a statutory formula that is not a per-pupil rate.

Source: CT State Department of Education, EdSight — the enrollment dashboard (enrollment.total_enrollment, the October 1 count) and the FTE staffing report (the fte value of every category under fte_staffing.categories, summed). Read one school year at a time. FTE staffing is reported by the district that employs the staff, so a district’s line covers only the positions that district employs. A school year the source has no row for is a gap, left as a break in the line rather than plotted as zero.

Source: CT State Department of Education, EdSight FTE staffing report (the fte value of each category under fte_staffing.categories, as a share of the same year’s reported total). Read one school year at a time. Category names are the state’s own and their wording has changed over the years covered; the grouping below is this site’s editorial decision and the file makes no grouping of its own. A category with no row in a given year is a gap in the source rather than a zero, so a year missing a category is a share of the categories that year reports.

Source: CT State Department of Education, EdSight FTE staffing report (the fte value of the categories under fte_staffing.categories named here: ). Read one school year at a time. Combining the two administrator categories into one line is this site’s editorial decision; the state reports them separately. Percent change is computed off each group’s own first reported year, and the insight box names those years. A group is a count of positions, not of people or of spending, and it says nothing about what those positions are paid.

Source: numerator — CT State Department of Education, EdSight enrollment dashboard (enrollment.total_enrollment, the October 1 count). Denominator — EdSight FTE staffing report (the fte value of the general education teacher category under fte_staffing.categories). Read one school year at a time. Both figures come from the same district and the same school year, and both are reported by the district that employs the staff. This ratio is not a class size, not an average class size, and not a figure the state publishes; the state does not report class sizes here and this page does not estimate them.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), field equalized_mill_rate, from data.ct.gov. Peer lines are the median of each group, not a total or an average. This town is excluded from its own group medians.

Source: CT OPM Mill Rates (emyx-j53e), fields real_estate_personal and grand_list_year, from data.ct.gov, as packaged in /data/ct_mill_rates.json. Peer lines are the median of each group's own posted rates, not a ratio of medians; this town is excluded from its own group medians. Where OPM files a rate of zero, that town-year is carried as missing rather than charted as zero; some of those gaps are filled from OPM's adopted-budget summary (pcg4-s5rc), and every filled cell names that dataset in the payload. Where this file and the Municipal Fiscal Indicators file disagree on a town-year, both figures are published in the payload metadata and neither is silently preferred.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields mill_rate_real_estate_personal (nominal) and equalized_mill_rate, from data.ct.gov. Towns with no equalized rate reported for this year are omitted.

Source: CT OPM Mill Rates (emyx-j53e), fields real_estate_personal and grand_list_year, from data.ct.gov, as packaged in /data/ct_mill_rates.json. Peer towns with no rate published for this year are omitted. Hover a bar for the October 1 grand list the rate is laid against. Some cells in this file are filled from OPM's adopted-budget summary (pcg4-s5rc), and every filled cell names that dataset in the payload. Where this file and the Municipal Fiscal Indicators file disagree on a town-year, both figures are published in the payload metadata and neither is silently preferred.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields equalized_mill_rate and mill_rate_real_estate_personal, from data.ct.gov. Groton (City) is excluded: it is a sub-municipality reported separately from Groton and has no equalized rate reported. Towns with no equalized rate reported for this year are also omitted, so the count of ranked towns can be below 169. A revaluation factor near 0.70 indicates a grand list set at a recent revaluation; a lower factor indicates market values have risen since the town last revalued, a higher factor that they have fallen.

Source: CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3), fields residential, commercial, land, motor_vehicle, personal and class_total, from data.ct.gov. Shares are taken against class_total — the five classes summed — and not against net_grand_list.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators: Economic and Grand List Data (xgef-f6jp), metrics Tax exempt property assessment and Total exempt and taxable property assessment, from data.ct.gov, packaged as tax_exempt_share_pct in /data/ct_tax_exempt_share.json, an extract of the whole dataset at /data/ct_grand_list_indicators.json. Both figures are assessed value on the October 1 grand list named on the axis. Each median is taken across towns’ own shares, one share per town, with this town left out of its two peer medians; the statewide median counts every Connecticut town, this one included.

Source: CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3), fields residential, commercial, land, motor_vehicle, personal, class_total and net_grand_list, from data.ct.gov; inflation from US Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U, US city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted, series CUUR0000SA0 (data.bls.gov), annual averages only, packaged as /data/us_cpi_u.json. The index is built on class_total — the five classes summed — because that is the only denominator the class columns reconcile against; the same window measured on net_grand_list is reported in the box above wherever the source publishes it at both ends.

Why the shape is a staircase rather than a slope. Connecticut freezes a property’s assessed value between revaluations: under CGS §12-62a the assessment does not follow the market until the town revalues, and CGS §12-62 requires a revaluation every five years. In between, a town’s list can only grow from new construction, newly registered vehicles and business personal property. A revaluation then resets every property at once — upward or downward, depending on what the market did since the last one. So a grand list moves in occasional steps while consumer prices move every year, and the two lines can sit far apart in the middle of a cycle without either one having done anything unusual.

Source: assessed figures from CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3), field net_grand_list, from data.ct.gov; market-value figures from CT OPM Equalized Net Grand List by Town (8rr8-a322), field equalized_grand_list, as packaged in /data/ct_equalized_rates.json. Both are keyed to the October 1 grand list year on the axis, not to a fiscal year. This chart uses net_grand_list, which subtracts the exemptions the class columns above are gross of, so it is a different measure of the list from the one the two charts above index. Neither series is adjusted for inflation; the chart above sets the assessed list against consumer prices.

Source: levy from CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields net_grand_list and population_state_dept_of_public_health, and CT OPM Mill Rates (emyx-j53e), fields real_estate_personal and motor_vehicle; the vehicle share of the list from CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3), fields motor_vehicle and class_total; income from US Census ACS 5-year table B19013 (variable B19013_001E), packaged as median_household_income in /data/ct_town_income.json. The levy is computed by splitting the net grand list into its motor-vehicle share and the rest, applying real_estate_personal to the non-vehicle part and motor_vehicle to the vehicle part, then dividing the two together by 1,000 and by population. Connecticut caps the motor-vehicle mill rate by statute, separately from the real-estate rate, which is why the two rates are applied to their own shares of the list; the shares are read from the October 1 grand list each rate is laid against. The result is the amount the rates lay against the taxable list, not the amount a town collected, and it excludes special-district rates. A town is plotted only where the grand list, the rate, the population and the income figure all exist for the same fiscal year. Some rate cells are filled from OPM's adopted-budget summary (pcg4-s5rc), and every filled cell names that dataset in the payload; where the rate file and the Municipal Fiscal Indicators file disagree on a town-year, both figures are published in the payload metadata and neither is silently preferred. The dashed line is a least-squares fit through the plotted points — a summary of the scatter, not a prediction for any town.

Source: the same inputs as the chart above — CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields net_grand_list and population_state_dept_of_public_health; CT OPM Mill Rates (emyx-j53e), fields real_estate_personal and motor_vehicle; CT OPM Net Grand List by Town (webp-fgt3), fields motor_vehicle and class_total, for the vehicle share of the list; US Census ACS 5-year table B19013, field median_household_income. The levy applies the posted real-estate rate to the non-vehicle share of the grand list and the motor-vehicle rate to the vehicle share, because Connecticut caps the motor-vehicle mill rate by statute, separately from the real-estate rate. Numerator and denominator are per-resident and per-household respectively, so the ratio is a comparison index rather than an effective tax rate on income. Some rate cells are filled from OPM's adopted-budget summary (pcg4-s5rc), and every filled cell names that dataset in the payload; where the rate file and the Municipal Fiscal Indicators file disagree on a town-year, both figures are published in the payload metadata and neither is silently preferred.

Source: CT OPM Tax Levy by Municipality and Special Tax District (he33-brru), fields net_real_property_tax_levy, net_personal_prop_tax_levy, net_motor_vehicle_tax_levy and supplemental_mv, from data.ct.gov, packaged in /data/ct_equalized_rates.json. Each share is that figure divided by the four summed, so the supplemental motor-vehicle bills, which the state reports beside the town’s total rather than inside it, are counted with the rest. The statewide median is taken one property type at a time across every town with a breakdown that year, this town included, so the four medians need not add to exactly 100. A year is left blank where the state’s town-wide row was a zero, a blank or a partial filing (a consolidated city billing most of its levy through internal districts); in the payload the town’s total for such a year is filled from OPM’s adopted-budget summary (pcg4-s5rc), which has no breakdown. Where the state’s three property-type figures do not add to its own total for a town-year, the payload lists the row and the shares here are taken over the three figures themselves. Special taxing districts are not included.

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, tables B19013 (variable B19013_001E, packaged as median_household_income) and B25077 (variable B25077_001E, packaged as median_home_value), in /data/ct_town_income.json. Peer lines are the median of each group's own town values; this town is excluded from its own group medians. Home value is the median value of owner-occupied housing units and is not a sale price.

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, tables B11001 (household type), B11005 (households by presence of people under 18) and B25002 (occupancy status), for Census county subdivisions, which in Connecticut are the towns — packaged as /data/ct_town_households.json by Data/fetch_ct_town_households.py. Estimates are published with a 90% margin of error and both are carried; the bands are those margins. Whether two estimates are called distinguishable here is decided by the simplest available rule — whether their 90% intervals overlap. That rule is deliberately conservative and is not a formal significance test; the Census Bureau advises against testing overlapping five-year releases against each other at all, which is a further reason to read small movements as unmeasured rather than as change.

Three things this chart is not. It is not a count of people — average household size has fallen for decades, so a town can hold population steady, have fewer children, and still gain households. It is not school enrollment — a household with children counts one household whether it has one child or four, and counts children who are not in the district’s schools. And consecutive points are not independent: a five-year estimate labeled the latest release pools survey responses from the five years ending there, so neighboring releases share four of their five years and the gap between them is not one year of change.

Source: Connecticut Department of Labor, Office of Research — Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, dataset 7zu6-8dcr ("QCEW by NAICS (2 level) and Towns") on data.ct.gov, fields annavgestabs, annavgemp and naics2, packaged as /data/ct_qcew_towns.json. The totals use the source’s "Total — All Industries" row (naics2 00); that row and "Total — All Private Industries" (05) are totals rather than sectors, so the sector breakdown excludes both and the sectors do not sum to the total.

What is inside the count and what is outside it. An establishment is a worksite, not a business: a firm with three locations in town counts three times, and a firm based elsewhere with one office in town counts once. Coverage is limited to employment covered by unemployment insurance, so sole proprietors and partners without employees, most independent contractors, and some agricultural and domestic work are absent — the self-employed do not appear here at all. And these are jobs located in the town, not jobs held by its residents: people who commute out are not counted, and people who commute in are.

Source: CT OPM Equalized Net Grand List by Town (8rr8-a322), fields residential_ratio and cip_ratio, packaged as /data/ct_revaluation.json by Data/fetch_ct_revaluation.py. cip_ratio covers commercial, industrial and public-utility property together. The statewide line is the median of every town’s own residential ratio in that grand list year; this town is excluded from it. Ratios are keyed to the October 1 grand list year on the axis, not to a fiscal year. A ratio is measured from the sales that happened, so in a small town, or a class with few sales, it rests on very few transactions and OPM publishes no count of them here. Ratios outside 10–200 are treated as too thin to stand for a whole class and are not plotted.

Source: CT OPM Equalized Net Grand List by Town (8rr8-a322) for the class assessed values (residential_net, apartments_net, cip_net, vacant_net, land_use_net, ten_mill_net, total_personal_property_mvpp) and the sales ratio each carries; CT OPM Revaluation Years by Town, 2023–2037 (2se9-jnuq) for the scheduled year — both packaged as /data/ct_revaluation.json by Data/fetch_ct_revaluation.py. Each real-property class is stepped by 70 ÷ its own sales ratio; motor vehicle and personal property are carried unchanged. The bill change is the class assessment factor times the property-rate factor. The new property rate preserves the levy with vehicle revenue calculated separately using matching-year OPM mill rates (emyx-j53e) and net vehicle assessments (webp-fgt3). Vehicle rates cannot exceed 32.46 mills or an already lower published vehicle ceiling; special-district rates are excluded. Peer and statewide bars are the median of each town’s own figure computed the same way; this town is excluded from every median it is compared against. The schedule is the schedule as published, and revaluations do move — the legislature deferred several in 2020.

This is a measurement carried forward, not a forecast. The drift is already in the record; the flat levy is an assumption, stated so the redistribution can be seen on its own. Four things it cannot know: the market keeps moving after the last measured grand list year, so a town revaluing later faces a larger step than this; the levy is set by a budget nobody has adopted yet; every figure is a class average, so a property that moved differently from its class moves differently from this; and a town that has just revalued shows no drift, because it has not had time to accumulate any.

Source: CT OPM parcel and CAMA data — i7xw-titi, pqrn-qghw and rny9-6ak2 — reduced to revaluation_detail.json by Data/fetch_ct_cama.py. Each property is matched to itself across the revaluation using the identifier named below, and the figure is the change in its assessment. Homes are sorted by what they were assessed at before the reset and cut into ten equal groups; each bar is the median change within its group. A property counts only where it is a home in both files, and new construction is excluded by year built, because a house that did not exist before did not have its assessment reset. Which towns can be measured this way is decided by Data/check_cama_coverage.py and recorded in Data/cama_coverage.json.

Every bar is a median within its group. Half the homes in a group moved more than its bar and half moved less, and a property that moved differently from its group moved differently from this chart. The spread inside each group is real and is not drawn here.

Source: the same CT OPM parcel and CAMA files and the same matched properties as the chart above, grouped by the property type the town’s own assessor recorded rather than by any category imposed here. Type labels vary between towns and are normalized by Data/cama_use.py. A type is shown only where at least 20 matched homes carry it, so a handful of properties never becomes a published median. Towns that file every dwelling without a type do not carry this chart at all.

Type and value are not independent. Where a type moved further than the rest, it is usually also among the cheaper stock in that town, so this chart and the one above are two views of one pattern rather than two separate findings. Each bar carries the median assessment its type held before the reset, so the two can be read together.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), fields equalized_net_grand_list and property_tax_revenues. The base shown is the equalized grand list, OPM’s estimate of everything the town taxes at full market value, and not the assessed list the mill rate is applied to. That choice matters: a revaluation resets assessed values in one step, so a growth rate taken across a revaluation measures the reset rather than the base and can even change its sign. Both series are indexed to their first year so the two rates can be compared; the levels are different quantities and are never plotted on one axis.

The base here is measured at market value rather than at assessed value, because assessed values are reset in one step at each revaluation and a growth rate taken across a reset would measure the reset. The trade is that the mill rate is applied to the assessed list, not this one, so the two lines describe the pressure on a rate rather than computing it.

Source: CT OPM statutory formula aid by town (sdcm-adr4), packaged as /data/ct_statutory_aid.json. These are appropriated figures for fiscal years the town has not finished billing, which is what makes them forward-looking; they are what the legislature has enacted, not what a town has received. Appropriations are revised, and a mid-year rescission or a new budget can change them. Education Cost Sharing is shown apart from the rest because it is the largest single grant and moves on its own formula.

Source: CT OPM adopted municipal budgets (pcg4-s5rc), packaged as /data/ct_adopted_budgets.json, with US CPI-U annual averages (/data/us_cpi_u.json) for the inflation comparison. Solid segments are adopted budgets the town actually voted. The dashed segment is the same series continued at the town’s own average annual rate over the adopted years shown, and it is an illustration of that rate rather than anything the town has decided. CPI-U is a consumer price index, not a municipal cost index, and government costs have generally run above it.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (property_tax_revenues, intergovernmental_revenues, total_revenues). See the recipe at the bottom of this page.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (intergovernmental_revenues ÷ total_revenues). Aid includes education grants (ECS and others) that pass through the town’s books. Each peer line is the median of the individual towns’ own shares, not the ratio of the group’s median amounts.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (total_fund_balance and unassigned, each ÷ total_expenditures). On the commonly cited 17% benchmark: the GFOA’s published general recommendation is that a government hold no less than two months — about 17% — of general fund operating revenues or expenditures as unrestricted fund balance. Neither line on this chart is that measure: unassigned balance is narrower than unrestricted (unrestricted also counts committed and assigned amounts), and this chart’s denominator is all-funds expenditures rather than general fund alone. The guideline therefore cannot be read off either line as met or unmet, and is shown here only as a sense of scale. It is a general professional guideline in any case, not a state requirement.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (bonded_long_term_debt ÷ population_state_dept_of_public_health). Nominal dollars, not inflation-adjusted. Each peer line is the median of the individual towns’ own per-resident figures.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (annual_debt_service ÷ total_expenditures). Each peer line is the median of the individual towns’ own shares, not the ratio of the group’s median amounts.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators, ej6f-y2wf (net_pension_liability + net_opeb_liability, ÷ population), most recent year covered. Read this one carefully: these figures reflect the plans a town runs on its own books. Connecticut teachers are in the state-run Teachers’ Retirement System, whose unfunded liability sits with the state and does not appear on any town’s balance sheet, and many towns place other employees in the state MERS plan or in defined-contribution plans. A low number here means a town carries little of this obligation directly — it does not mean no obligation exists for its employees.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators — Uniform Chart of Accounts, e2qt-k238 (salaries_wages, employee_benefits, other), most recent year reported, function-level subtotal rows only so nothing is double counted.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators — Uniform Chart of Accounts, e2qt-k238, “Total Expenditures” row per town, most recent year reported. Towns differ in how they book some costs — a town that pays part of its benefits out of an internal service fund or charges them to a different function can report a different split for the same underlying compensation. Because of those booking differences, small gaps between towns should not be read as meaningful. Two kinds of town are omitted rather than charted at zero: those the source does not report for that year at all, and those whose filing reports wages but no employee-benefit amount at the total level (their benefit costs appear inside another category). Charting the second group at 0% would assert they spend nothing on benefits, which the source does not support, and would pull down the group median. The omitted towns are named in the box above.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), the latest matched fiscal year. Higher is not better or worse — it is only higher. A high rank on reserves and a high rank on mill rate mean very different things, and this chart takes no position on either. The per-pupil figure here is OPM education expenditures ÷ enrollment (audited, all funds); it is not the CSDE Net Current Expenditure Per Pupil series, and the two are not interchangeable. OPM education expenditures cover only the grades a town itself operates, so for a town that belongs to a regional school district for some of its grades the per-pupil rank is not on the same basis as a town running its own K-12 district.

Source: CT OPM Municipal Fiscal Indicators (ej6f-y2wf), total_expenditures ÷ population, the latest matched fiscal year. Every group median excludes this town, so the town is never part of its own benchmark. District Reference Group assignments were last made in 2006. The rule-based bar uses a peer set built by this site from CT OPM data by Data/build_peer_sets.py, not an official state grouping.

Source: CSDE EdSight GrowthModelExport (Average Percentage of Target Achieved, ELA, all students, All Grades Combined), mean of the latest three reported school years; EdSight EFS total expenditures ÷ total need students, where total need students = resident students + 30% of FRPM-eligible + 15% of FRPM-eligible above 60% of enrollment + 25% of multilingual learners (CGS §10-262f(25)), five-year mean. Peers are the fifteen districts of the same grade-span type nearest on six demographic variables and enrollment (Ohio Department of Education similar-districts method), chosen by formula in Data/build_school_peer_model.py. Growth is a percentage of target, not a score: 100 would mean every student reached an ambitious one-year target. No line is fitted because fifteen points cannot support one.

Source: as above, Math. CSDE EdSight GrowthModelExport, three-year mean; EFS spending per need-weighted pupil, five-year mean.

Source: CSDE EdSight PerformanceIndexExport (ELA Performance Index, all students, 0–100), mean of the latest three reported school years. Prediction = ordinary least squares of that index on: share of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals, share of English learners, share of students with disabilities (EdSight October 1 enrollment), and log median household income, share of adults with a bachelor’s degree, share of children living with one parent (ACS 5-year, the district’s own Census geography where one exists, else its town). One observation per district, unweighted; coefficients and R² are in school_performance_model.json. The residual is relative (the residuals average to zero across districts, so a large share sit below the line) and correlational. Districts with fewer than 20 tested students are not shown; fewer than 500 are marked for sample size.

Source: CSDE EdSight EFS EFSDistrictLevelbyFunctionExport total expenditures (district self-reported, unaudited; excludes debt service, capital and food service), five-year mean ending in the latest reported year. Per pupil = EFS pupils. Per need-weighted pupil = CGS §10-262f(25) weights applied to October 1 FRPM and multilingual-learner counts. Special-education tuition removed = the EFS Special Education Tuition line subtracted first. Wage-adjusted = divided by the NCES Comparable Wage Index for Teachers for the district. Constant dollars = CPI-U to the latest year. Peer medians exclude the district itself. The town’s own Net Current Expenditure per pupil is a different basis (CGS §10-261) and is shown in the overview, not here.

Source: CSDE EdSight Resident Town Dashboard (report notes: Report Notes_Choice-Town.pdf), read for every town by Data/fetch_edsight_resident_town.py. “Public Schools” is the town’s own local district; “Regional Schools” its regional district. A cell the state suppresses (counts of 5 or fewer; rates below 20 students) reads “suppressed”; a school type with no such students is not listed. These are town-of-residence figures and are not the same population as the operating-district figures above, even for a town whose residents mostly attend its own schools.

Source: EdSight FTE Staffing report via administration.json (staffing.groups.admin_central + admin_school, divided by every reported group). Full-time equivalent positions on an October 1 school-year basis. Grouping the state’s twelve assignment categories is this site’s editorial decision; the payload carries the exact source categories behind every group, and the insight box below names the ones in the numerator. A category with no row in a year is a gap in the source, so a year’s share is of the categories that year reports and is not adjusted for the ones it does not.

Source: EdSight FTE Staffing report via administration.json (staffing.groups.admin_central and admin_school, the state’s categories carried separately). A one-year step in either bar can be a staffing change or a change in how a position was classified that year; the source offers no way to tell the two apart, and the insight box names any step large enough to be worth that caution.

Source: EdSight via administration.json — numerator staffing.enrollment (the October 1 headcount, not the average membership the OPM finance files use); denominators the administrator categories and the two teacher categories, for the same district and the same school year. The two lines are on different scales of the same axis and are not comparable to each other in level; what each shows is its own movement.

Source: both axes from EdSight via administration.json, same district and same school year on each point — vertical, the administrator share described above; horizontal, staffing.enrollment. The fit is a description of these points and not a prediction for any district. The box below also gives the size question without a model, as the observed median share in each quarter of districts by enrollment, so a reader is not asked to take a fitted slope on trust. The statewide version of this chart, with every district ranked, is on the administration ranking page.

Source: EdSight FTE Staffing report via administration.json, most recent school year the district reports. Peer towns come from this town’s own comparison groups; each is mapped to the district that operates its schools, so a regional district serving several peer towns is one bar, not several. Districts with no reported staffing that year are omitted rather than charted at zero, and the insight box names them.

Source: CT State Department of Education, Education Financial System, Per Pupil Expenditures by Function (District), via administration.json (spending.general_admin + school_admin ÷ spending.total). The functions are defined identically for every district by the state’s chart of accounts; how a district organises and staffs those offices is not. The peer medians are the median across the peer districts’ own shares, excluding this district. This series covers fewer years than the staffing charts above, and starts later; each chart shows the years its own source publishes.

Source: EdSight Education Financial System via administration.json (spending.general_admin and school_admin, each divided by spending.pupils, the pupil count the same file reports for the same district and year). The pupil basis is the state’s for this report and is not the October 1 headcount used by the staffing charts above, so a per-pupil figure here and a per-student ratio there rest on different denominators and are not two versions of one number.