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Legislative funding provides belated boost for education, but not a windfall
August 5, 2005 A welcome funding increase helps make up for years of no new dollars The Legislature provided a 4% revenue increase. This is very encouraging news for the Spring Lake Park School District and for public education overall. That 4% increase on the foundation aid formula will provide about $920,000 in new revenue for the 2005-06 school year for our school district. A part of that revenue will be used to “unfreeze” the budgets of some of our departments and programs that had been previously frozen for years. This means that the district will re-initiate curriculum improvement programs, upgrade portions of our technology, and renew the District’s buildings and grounds maintenance efforts. An additional portion of that new revenue will be set aside as an emergency reserve. Because this is the first increase in State revenue in four years, the overall increase in the past four years has averaged barely 1% per year, while actual expenditures grow at the rate of approximately 3.5% per year. Here’s an unwelcome fact: during the legislative session, one legislative leader asked rhetorically, “What did schools do with all of the money we gave them the last time?” Unfortunately that’s a very misleading question. Legislators know very well that school districts must--and do--use State revenues in accordance with Sate law. Further, legislators are fully aware of the driving inflationary costs with which school districts (and all other private and public entities) must contend. When school district revenues from the State stay flat, then, obviously, inflationary increases put an even heavier burden on existing educational programs. For years, school districts throughout the state were either cutting or dipping into their reserve funds (if they had them) simply to keep pace with cost-of-living inflation in areas such as fuel and health care. That’s the primary reason that some of the additional revenue provided by the State this year will be set aside for an emergency fund in our school district—to help to cover inflationary expenses when or if additional inflationary revenues aren’t provided by the state legislature in the future. Local decisions on funding basic maintenance on facilities A second initiative provided by the Legislature this year will also have a significant and positive impact for many of the districts throughout the state of Minnesota. That is the ability of local School Boards to levy for basic maintenance and deferred maintenance items, just as they do for health and safety needs. Previously, only 21 school districts in the state had that authorization; the other 320 school districts had to go without. This meant that those districts had to make decisions annually on whether to provide maintenance upgrades to their schools and buildings or to retain or hire classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, or other employees. It’s hardly a fair tradeoff, and finally the Legislature was able to see the huge inequity that they had created by providing that option for the 21 largest districts in the state while denying that option to a majority of the state’s school districts. Had this option been available to our school district over the last ten years, the burgeoning list of deferred maintenance items could have been much smaller. While this new legislation doesn’t take away the need for a bond referendum in 2006 for Spring Lake Park Schools, it will certainly help to ensure that, if a bond issue is passed, there will be funds available to assist in the annual maintenance programs of all of the district buildings. Cautious optimism about performance pay The third key initiative passed by the Legislature, with the leadership of the governor, provided a new program called Q-Comp, which will uses incentives to encourage school districts and teachers to negotiate a new method of compensation. That new method would be based more on results and outcomes of students rather than solely on years of experience and training of teachers. It must be emphasized that neither the Legislature nor the governor believes this initiative will reduce costs for school districts. We are hopeful that the incentives will encourage even greater levels of student achievement as a result. Although both School Boards and teachers’ organizations are cautiously supportive, and even hopeful about the end results, there is more than a slight amount of skepticism because of similar and previously failed efforts over the last 30 years. For example, the state promises to provide additional funding over the next 2-4 years for those districts that participate, but doesn’t assure that that funding will remain in effect beyond that time. Teachers are concerned that even more administrators will be needed in order to supervise staff in a way that keeps the process objective and fair, but this, too, will increase costs. Nevertheless, as a district we are hopeful and cautiously optimistic and will move forward in a way that best and most positively impacts our students and our school district. Clearly, one column can certainly not cover all of the educational initiatives that were provided under the Omnibus Education Act this year, but I hope that this brief summary will enable you to get a better glimpse of school operations, funding, and decisions for the coming years. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at dhelms@district16.org. |
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