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Connecticut lawmakers nearly a decade ago endorsed a plan to gradually increase the $2.4 billion Education Cost Sharing program, the state’s chief operating grant for K-12 school districts. Gov. Ned Lamont’s spending plan maintains a $95 million increase for ECS that lawmakers began this fiscal year.

His plan also maintains increases ordered in each of the past two years for special education programs, as well as a new $10 million grant he and lawmakers had been planning for the 2026-27 fiscal year to encourage districts to find innovative new approaches to special ed.

Sasha is a data reporting fellow with The Connecticut Mirror. She graduated from the University of Maryland in May with a degree in journalism and a minor in creative writing. For the past year Sasha was working part time for the Herald-Mail, a newspaper based in Western Maryland. She was also a reporter and copy editor for Capital News Service, the university’s wire service where she covered the state legislature, the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse, school board elections, youth mental health and climate change. Earlier in her college career, Sasha also interned at the Baltimore Magazine and wrote for numerous student publications including the Diamondback, the university’s independent, student-run newspaper.

Keith has spent most of his four decades as a reporter specializing in state government finances, analyzing such topics as income tax equity, waste in government and the complex funding systems behind Connecticut’s transportation and social services networks. He has been the state finances reporter at CT Mirror since it launched in 2010. Prior to joining CT Mirror Keith was State Capitol bureau chief for The Journal Inquirer of Manchester, a reporter for the Day of New London, and a former contributing writer to The New York Times. Keith is a graduate of and a former journalism instructor at the University of Connecticut.