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Facilities News - Since 2001
Idaho Legislature Takes Up Bill to Help School Districts Repair and Replace Buildings-- ProPublica Idaho: February 09, 2024 [ abstract]
Idaho Republican leaders introduced a bill Thursday that would provide $1.5 billion in new funding over 10 years for school districts to repair and replace their aging and overcrowded school buildings — a proposal they said would mark the largest investment in school facilities in state history.
The bill would create the School Modernization Facilities Fund, which districts could use for construction and maintenance needs. It would also provide money through an existing fund to help school districts pay off their bonds and levies, which are used to finance school facilities and district operating costs.
School districts across Idaho have for decades faced challenges to fixing or replacing their aging, deteriorating schools and to building new ones to accommodate growth. Last year, an Idaho Statesman and ProPublica series showed how the state’s restrictive School Funding policies and the Legislature’s reluctance to make significant investments in school facilities have challenged teachers and affected student learning. Some students have had to learn in schools with leaky ceilings, discolored water, failing plumbing and freezing classrooms.
During Gov. Brad Little’s State of the State address earlier this year, he announced he wanted to make funding for school facilities “priority No. 1.” He proposed putting $2 billion toward school facilities over 10 years, or $200 million per year.
-- Becca Savransky - Idaho Statesman Proposed Arizona House Bill could have impacts on school funding projects-- abc15 Arizona: December 29, 2023 [ abstract] PHOENIX — A proposed bill in the legislature could make it harder for Arizona school districts to fund new projects.
House Bill 2088, proposed by Republicans, Rep. Laurin Hendrix and Rep. Barbara Parker, said it would prohibit any businesses that give money for school bonds and override campaigns – that pass – from being able to bid on the projects that may happen.
For example, if a school district passes a bond measure to build a new school, the construction companies that donated money to the campaign would not be able to do the construction.
-- Elenee Dao Gov. Murphy announces nearly $50 million in preschool funding for expansion, renovation-- News12 New Jersey New Jersey: November 10, 2023 [ abstract] Gov. Phil Murphy promises $51.9 million of federal money for New Jersey preschools.
The Murphy Administration said the money is going to 23 school districts to support 30 projects that will enable the creation, expansion and renovation of preschool facilities statewide. This is money that goes back to the American Rescue Plan that was passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Murphy made the announcement Thursday while appearing at the teachers' union convention. In a statement, Murphy said the funding will enable more districts to expand their capacity to offer full-day preschool programming to more students.
“Equitable access to early childhood education across the board is key to ensuring the long-term success of our children and our state as a whole. My administration will continue to work toward bringing free, full-day pre-K to every district throughout New Jersey,” Murphy said in statement.
-- Lanette Espy Do K-12 Students Have a Right to Well-Funded School Buildings?-- Education Week National: September 19, 2023 [ abstract]
Nearly every state’s constitution includes a right to a free, basic education for all children. But what exactly do states owe every student?
That question is far from settled. Case in point: A school district in rural Washington state recently argued before the state’s highest court that a constitutional commitment to education includes adequate funding from the state for school building improvements. The court didn’t quite agree.
This case might seem like a one-off local example of confusing technicalities in school finance. But it’s part of a longstanding and ongoing tradition of using the byzantine American judicial system to shape School Funding. And the verdict has implications that could reverberate well beyond Washington state.
The 400-student Wahkiakum school district on the state’s southwestern tip sued the state in 2021, arguing that it owes local school districts in low-wealth areas more financial support to keep their buildings safe and modern. But on Sept. 7, the Washington Supreme Court issued a unanimous verdict that sidestepped the district’s question. The court simply rejected the notion that the state bears sole responsibility for school facilities improvements.
The verdict was disappointing for Tom Ahearne, the lead lawyer representing the school district. He believes judges ignored the plaintiff’s argument that the state bears some responsibility for school facilities funding, not necessarily all of it.
“What all nine of them agreed to do is not answer the question that was asked, answer a different question, and then let the legislature do something,” Ahearne told Education Week.
-- Mark Lieberman Hamilton County school board decries last-minute change to maintenance funding-- Chattanooga Times Free Press Tennessee: June 17, 2023 [ abstract]
As their schools struggle with water leaks, crumbling sidewalks and sinking floors, members of the Hamilton County Board of Education have deep apprehensions about ceding control of $6 million that was reserved in their proposed budget for needed building repairs.
"This is not a compromise," school board member Ben Connor, D-Chattanooga, said during a meeting Thursday evening. "Compromises are when equal parties come together and they make a plan based on a discussion, and after that discussion, they come to an agreement. Compromises don't have ultimatums. They don't have threats. This is a political stickup. It's a political heist, and it was done on purpose."
Amid a windfall in new revenue under the state's new School Funding formula, the Hamilton County Board of Education intended to increase its spending on deferred maintenance from $2 million to $8 million in the proposed budget for the fiscal year that will start July 1.
However, the board voted 8-2 on a last-minute resolution Thursday to reduce the amount back to $2 million in favor of the county using that $6 million for a more substantial bond issuance — something county leaders say could actually allow them to complete building repairs at a quicker clip. Members Karitsa Jones, D-Chattanooga, and Larry Grohn, R-East Ridge, voted against the measure.
-- David Floyd What an Idaho school funding lawsuit might look like-- IdahoEDnews.org Idaho: February 07, 2023 [ abstract] It is not inevitable that the Idaho Legislature will invite a School Funding lawsuit, but legislators appear at the present time to be heading toward provoking legal action. Three factors will play into a decision as to whether or not to sue the State for violating provisions of the Idaho Constitution: (1) whether the Legislature continues to disregard its constitutional duty to “maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools,” which means adequately funding the instructional side of the public school system; (2) whether the Legislature complies with the Idaho Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling that the State has the primary responsibility for building, equipping and maintaining school facilities; and (3) whether the Legislature violates Idaho’s strong prohibition against using taxpayer money to support religious schooling.
-- Jim Jones - Opinion 6 Lawsuits That Could Shake Up How States Pay for Schools-- Education Week National: January 27, 2023 [ abstract]
Do states provide adequate funding to ensure all students can access a high-quality education? Do local taxpayers shoulder an unfair burden to provide money to schools? Are schools able to maintain operations as the cost of goods and services inevitably rises with inflation?
These are among the key questions driving ongoing lawsuits that could reshape how schools are funded in the states where they’re playing out, and reverberate elsewhere.
Far removed from the annual budgeting process, these funding lawsuits challenge the underlying mechanisms that provide districts with those dollars.
They have proved an essential tool for public school advocates—including education lawyers, teachers unions, district leaders, and even parents—aiming to hold states accountable to their constitutional obligations to provide an adequate education for all. Courts that rule in the plaintiffs’ favor can pressure lawmakers to allocate resources they might otherwise fail to supply.
These cases often take years to resolve and play out behind the scenes of day-to-day school operations. But the litigation often represents a key turning point in the political fight for more equitable education funding, said David Sciarra, who’s set to retire this month after 26 years as executive director of the nonprofit Education Law Center. He’s been at the center of numerous School Funding lawsuits, including the landmark Abbott rulings in New Jersey that set the stage for sweeping change across the state in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
-- Mark Lieberman From public lands to Montana classrooms-- Montana Free Press Montana: January 11, 2023 [ abstract] Just ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen issued a celebratory announcement that she’d accepted $46.3 million from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Her message came complete with a photo of a large novelty check made out to “Montana’s K-12 Schools” and emblazoned with the image of a remote state-owned cabin site in Sanders County.
“Our precious state trust lands are working for our most precious treasures — our students,” Arntzen said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “The money earned from our trust lands directly benefits all Montana’s public school students while easing the burden on Montana taxpayers.”
The celebration spoke to a line often repeated by politicians and conservationists about the role that public lands — and, more specifically, the money they generate — play in Montana’s public school system. For decades, activities such as natural resource development and livestock grazing have been touted as a boon for School Funding, producing approximately $50 million annually that state law earmarks for the benefit of students. It’s a source of financial support for public education that’s actually enshrined in the Montana Constitution, designed to channel dollars to classrooms in perpetuity.
But as with so many revenue streams in state government, the full story is far from simple. The $46.3 million Arntzen accepted last fall will eventually reach public schools across the state, but not before traveling a path that will take it through the Montana Legislature, which convened for the 2023 session on Jan. 2. In fact, lawmakers on a joint subcommittee tasked with overseeing Montana’s next education budget received a detailed briefing Monday on the various formulas and mechanisms in place to guide state dollars to local schools.
-- Alex Sakariassen Arizona Judge Delays Trial in Fight Over Education Funding-- U.S. News & World Report Arizona: January 07, 2023 [ abstract]
PHOENIX (AP) — A lawsuit over how much money Arizona's lawmakers allocate for school maintenance, buses, textbooks and technology won't go to trial next week, after a judge granted a request for a delay by the state’s incoming attorney general.
Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes said her office needs time to determine whether some or all of the claims can be resolved without a trial.
The trial was set to begin Monday. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dewain Fox approved Mayes’ request Friday and scheduled a status hearing for March 17, the Arizona Republic reported.
A group of school districts and associations representing school officials and teachers sued the state in 2017. They argued that the Legislature had shorted them billions of dollars in capital funding for more than a decade.
The lawsuit sought a declaration that Arizona’s School Funding scheme was unconstitutional because it violated the “uniform and general” clause of the state Constitution. The state Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that it is the state’s responsibility to provide cash for new schools, major maintenance and things like textbooks. The Legislature began cutting that spending during the Great Recession of 2007-2009.
-- Associated Press Maryland committee approves $210 million in funding allocations for school projects-- The Center Square Maryland: December 12, 2022 [ abstract]
(The Center Square) – A total of 101 school-related projects totaling $210 million have been committed for Maryland’s capital improvement project budget for fiscal year 2024, after a recent vote from a state legislative panel.
The Maryland Interagency Commission on School Construction (IAC) on Thursday approved the funding allocations within the state’s capital improvement program, with the caveat the commitments represent 75% of the assumed $280 million earmarked.
The approvals came on the heels of statewide education officials submitting funding requests for a myriad of projects, big and small.
Alex Donahue, acting executive director of the IAC, said requests that came in this fall far outpaced the anticipated pool of money. A total of 23 local education agencies (LEAs), in addition to the Maryland School for the Blind, submitted $840 million worth of funding requests.
“This year’s CIP has been a challenging one to wrangle, as the needs across the state clearly are substantial,” Donahue said.
In his presentation to the IAC, Donahue said there is a reason the CIP funding requests have been voluminous as schools grapple with assorted funding issues.
“The CIP is the state’s most flexible School Funding program and can be used for almost any category of project,” Donahue said, pointing out the funding bucket can be applied to new school construction, as well as renovations.
-- Dave Fidlin Equity on the horizon: Ohio legislators propose $600 million for Appalachian schools-- The Columbus Dispatch Ohio: October 24, 2022 [ abstract] While the future of School Funding in Ohio beyond 2023 is dependent on the next state budget, State Reps. Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) and Shane Wilkin (R-Hillsboro) have crafted new legislation to increase equity in education in other ways.
The lawmakers' proposal, introduced earlier this month, would set aside $600 million to improve conditions for more than 58,000 students across 38 school districts in 18 Appalachian counties.
Known as the Accelerated Appalachian School Building Assistance Program, it would create a program under the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, the agency that oversees infrastructure projects for institutions supported by the state, which includes public K-12 schools.
“For too long, Ohio has prioritized investment in students from cities over students in rural areas,” Edwards wrote in a statement. “The introduction of this legislation sends a message to leaders in Columbus that it is time we deliver equitable school facility investment to Appalachian Ohio."
-- Ceili Doyle Concerned about equity in schools? Reykdal says timber money is part of the problem-- The Olympian Washington: July 20, 2022 [ abstract]
Urban communities are “disproportionately” receiving K-12 Common School Trust Dollars, despite the trust’s revenue coming from timber harvesting in rural areas, and State Superintendent Chris Reykdal said his office wants to change that. The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Reykdal held a press conference Tuesday — the first of nine OSPI has planned leading up to the legislative session in January — to outline their priorities for “transforming” public K-12 schools in the state. “We are a state that has to share in our interests,” Reykdal said. “Our kids deserve equitable opportunities to learn no matter where they are.”
The major challenge raised by OSPI is that the revenue being generated in rural Washington is “almost exclusively” ending up in counties such as King, Pierce, Spokane and even Yakima. Reykdal said that the Department of Natural Resources is responsible for managing a trust for public schools, which is primarily funded through timber harvesting. Agricultural lands and leases also fund that trust, but 50-60% of the money is generated from trees. Reykdal said that money, in turn, goes to the legislature, which decides how to appropriately fund the school system.
The Washington legislature puts that money towards the School Construction Assistance Program, OSPI’s largest capital budget program, which the state uses to match funding when voters pass local school district bonds. But to pass a local bond for School Funding, 60% of voters in school districts must approve the bond issue and the accompanying taxes to support it. Even if smaller, less affluent communities can pass a bond, they might be “property poor” so the amount they are matched by the legislature isn’t always significant enough to transform schools, he said. Due to the declining revenue from the harvesting of timber, Reykdal said OSPI wants to “stop depending” on those funds for the School Construction Assistance Program.
-- SHAUNA SOWERSBY State official: school construction funding has ‘gone away’-- Buffalo Bulletin Wyoming: June 24, 2022 [ abstract]
CHEYENNE — For years, Wyoming’s school capital construction account was primarily funded by federal coal lease bonus revenues.
“Those have essentially gone away,” Senior School Finance Analyst Matthew Willmarth with the Legislative Service Office told the Select Committee on School Facilities at an interim meeting in Casper this week. “There is no revenue forecast to be collected from that revenue source.”
To help make up a portion of Wyoming’s deficit in School Funding due to disappearing federal coal lease bonuses, lawmakers in 2018 eliminated an $8 million cap on state mineral royalties that could be appropriated for schools.
Looking ahead, Laramie County School District No.1 is poised to get some money for its own construction projects.
The state Constitution allows for one-third of all state mineral royalties to be appropriated for Wyoming schools, but lawmakers enacted an $8 million cap on that allocation in the 1990s.
The 2021-22 biennium was the first in which a full one-third of state mineral royalties could be deposited into the school capital construction account without that cap, Willmarth said.
“That allowance of the full one-third to be distributed for school capital construction purposes means there will be about $45 million more this year,” Willmarth said.
-- Carrie Haderlie Beyond Fate: Funding Structure and Public Policy Mean Rural Schools Don’t Get Fair Share-- The Daily Yonder Mississippi: March 15, 2022 [ abstract] A New York Times Magazine article, “The Tragedy of America’s Rural Schools,” tells a story about the educational system in Holmes County, Mississippi, suggesting that the community has failed to provide adequate school facilities, that administrators and teachers have failed to provide sound educational programs, and that the schools have failed to serve their students. The article shines a spotlight on a single student in a single rural school district. There is benefit in turning on a spotlight. It’s important to use the national media to tell stories about Mississippi and the rural schools that serve one-fifth of students across the United States. However, a spotlight illuminates only part of the whole scene. Overhead lighting can reveal a bigger picture–in this case, revealing the impact of state and federal policies that fail to meet the needs of rural schools and the students they serve–including Holmes County, Mississippi.
School Funding policies are one of the biggest barriers to rural school success. The bulk of funding for public schools comes from local property taxes. Rural populations, economies, and the presence of public lands (such as national forests) often yield lower property values, which in turn leads to funding inequities for rural schools. In Mississippi, as in most states, millage rates are capped. Even if the local community wanted to, districts cannot raise the property tax rate beyond a certain level to increase School Funding, placing rural districts at an even greater disadvantage. Inequitable funding can lead to lower teacher salaries and teacher shortages, limited school offerings, and under-resourced classrooms.
In Holmes County, the limited tax base means that school buildings are out of date and in need of repair. In 2019, the district sought voter approval for a bond issue that would have funded a new high school and freed up money currently going to facility maintenance to allow for a raise in teacher salaries. Nearly half the county turned out to vote, and the majority, 58%, voted to approve the bond issue–but a state law in Mississippi requires at least 60% approval of a bond issue. Other states, including Washington and Oklahoma, have similar requirements. Rules like these make it difficult for a local community to raise funds to provide adequate school facilities for their children–even when the majority of voters approve.
-- Devon Brenner Virginia lawmakers, school officials push for school construction funding-- WCYB 5 Virginia: February 09, 2022 [ abstract] BRISTOL, Va. (WCYB) — Leaky roofs, black mold, and crumbling buildings are just some of the issues facing many schools in Southwest Virginia.
The problem isn't new, and local lawmakers are pushing for change.
According to a recent survey by the Virginia Department of Education more than half of the state's public schools are at least 50 years old.
"It's widely known there is a $25 billion school facility crisis in the Commonwealth of Virginia," said Superintendent of Bristol, Virginia Schools Keith Perrigan.
It's a problem school officials in Bristol, Virginia know all too well. Some of their schools are more than 70 years old. Perrigan recently was in Richmond to help testify on behalf of rural schools.
"Southwest Virginia certainly needs to have a voice in Southwest Virginia and in Richmond in regards to School Funding and other issues," said Perrigan.
Del. Israel O'Quinn (R-Washington County), is sponsoring bills to help the school systems. One would take money from the state's literary fund and repurpose it for school construction.
-- Kristen Quon Jim Jones: The Legislature is violating its constitutional duty to Idaho’s public schools-- Magicvalley.com Idaho: January 14, 2022 [ abstract] Idaho has an historic $1.6 billion revenue surplus, much of which can and should be used to finally satisfy the Legislature’s constitutional duty to provide adequate funding for Idaho’s public school system. Article IX, Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution commands that “it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform, and thorough system of public, free common schools.” This is one of the most important responsibilities of the State.
The Idaho Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that these are not idle words. Rather, the Legislature must provide sufficient funding to properly operate our public school system. There can be no argument that the Legislature has failed to carry out this solemn obligation for many years. The issue was considered by the Supreme Court in a long-running case, titled Idaho Schools for Equal Educational Opportunity v. State, often referred to as the ISEEO case. The case was filed in 1990 and came before the Court on five occasions, producing five decisions.
In its second decision in 1996, the Court suspected that the State was not adequately funding the instructional side of the education system and sent the case back to the trial court for further consideration of that issue. The Legislature did increase School Funding for a while but that did not last long.
In the third round of the litigation, the focus became the proper meaning of a “thorough system” of public schools. The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that “a safe environment conducive to learning is inherently part of a thorough system of public, free common schools.” The Court said that further litigation was necessary to decide whether school facilities—buildings and fixtures—were being adequately financed by the State. The case was sent back to the trial court to find whether dilapidated school facilities were harming the work of educating our kids.
-- Jim Jones - Opinion Bristol Virginia School Board to ask city to fund energy performance agreement-- Bristol Herald Courier Virginia: January 06, 2022 [ abstract] BRISTOL, Va. — The Bristol Virginia School Board unanimously agreed Thursday night to pay for an energy performance agreement but will first ask the city to help fund a costlier one.
The board heard a presentation from Energy Systems Group, an Indiana firm that is proposing to make improvements at Virginia High School, Virginia Middle, Van Pelt Elementary and the central office. The company offered two options. Scenario three would cost $4.09 million and is expected to generate $2.16 million in energy savings over 15 years. Scenario two would cost about $5.67 million, and it is expected to generate $2.16 million over 15 years.
With either plan, the School Board plans to commit $2 million in federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funding to offset some of the costs, bringing the cost for scenario two down to $4.48 million and scenario three to $2.55 million.
“The board agreed to definitely move through scenario three and gave me the authority to ask City Council about scenario two,” Superintendent Keith Perrigan said after the meeting.
Perrigan plans to ask to be included on the agenda for Tuesday night’s City Council meeting but — because the agenda already includes a presentation about potential School Funding from Davenport & Co., he isn’t sure whether there is time.
-- David McGee Lawsuit - Small WA districts hurt by relying on property tax-- The Fresno Bee Washington: December 31, 2021 [ abstract]
The lead lawyer in the lawsuit that forced Washington state to revamp public School Funding has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a small district, saying the state is failing students due to the poor condition of school buildings. “Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in our democracy,” reads the complaint filed Tuesday in Wahkiakum County Superior Court. “Our state government’s failure to amply fund the Wahkiakum School District’s capital needs, however, does the opposite. It makes our public schools a perpetuator of class inequality.” The Seattle Times reports attorney Tom Ahearne is representing the Wahkiakum School District, which lies along the Columbia River and has fewer than 500 students.
The suit said Washington is violating the state constitution by failing to ensure all students learn in safe and modern school buildings. A decade ago, Ahearn was the winning attorney when the Washington Supreme Court ruled in the landmark McCleary case that the state was failing to uphold its state constitutional duty by amply funding basic education for all students. That case upended many school districts’ reliance on property taxes, but stopped short of changing the funding system for building construction and improvements.
-- Associated Press "Storage Closets and Locker Rooms Being Used as Classrooms"-- Erie News Now Pennsylvania: December 09, 2021 [ abstract]
HARRISBURG, PA. (ErieNewsNow) - This week, testimony in the Pennsylvania public education funding lawsuit highlighted serious issues facing schools around the Commonwealth.
Witnesses painted a grim picture of what a normal school day looks like for many students throughout Pennsylvania, and how the COVID-19 Pandemic made things worse.
Especially issues dealing with infrastructure like classroom space and capacity, ventilation systems, and more.
“We also heard a lot about facility issues in underfunded schools. Storage closets and locker rooms are being used as classrooms,” Deborah Gordon Klehr the Executive Director of the Education Law Center.
The Education Law Center and the Public Interest Law Center are the two law centers that filed the suit on behalf of the petitioners on Nov. 12.
“We heard about a section of a school where 125 young children have to share one toilet,” she added.
“Their facility-challenges predated COVID, but certainly have been exacerbated,” said Gordon Klehr.
Local superintendents agree public School Funding is inequitable throughout the Commonwealth.
“It's had a major impact on the district,” said Brian Polito, Superintendent for Erie Public Schools.
Polito says that non-English speaking students and students living in poverty are just a few populations that require more resources from the district.
Maintaining infrastructure and keeping schools warm during the winter also requires more funding.
“We have challenges that many other school districts don't have, and yet we were spending less than 93% of school districts across the state,” said Polito.
-- Brendan Scanland Belpre BOE meeting focuses on state of school buildings, plans-- The Marietta Times Ohio: September 02, 2021 [ abstract]
BELPRE — Belpre City Schools had its first of many community meetings discussing the current state of both school buildings in the district, as well as future plans.
The public meeting was held Wednesday evening at Belpre Elementary School.
Community members sat through a presentation from Fanning Howey’s Executive Director Steve Wilezynski and Educational Consultant Tim Hamilton on one of the potential funding options for renovations or a new school building, such as through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC).
“The school is the community. Our intent tonight and in our subsequent meetings is to just engage with our community and find out what their wants are, what they don’t want,” said Belpre City Schools Superintendent Jeff Greenley. “What their cautions may be so that at the end of the day, we can have a consensus on a facilities plan and we can move forward.”
Established in 1997, the OFCC is a state agency that provides School Funding opportunities for Ohio school districts, and participation with OFCC is a district choice.
By using the funds, OFCC is co-owner of the school and the state will co-fund projects based upon a district’s relative wealth in comparison to every other district in Ohio. The least wealthy districts are eligible for the highest amount of state funding.
-- TYLER BENNETT The link between educational inequality and infrastructure-- The Washington Post National: August 06, 2021 [ abstract]
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) recently introduced legislation calling for $1.43 trillion in federal funding to support upgrades to school buildings and green infrastructure while making major investments in teaching and learning. As a former public school principal, counselor and teacher, Bowman understands firsthand the hardships that educators, families and youths have endured this year — and especially the underappreciated but powerful link between sustainable infrastructure and education.
Indeed, educational inequality has long been fueled by the inefficient physical structures of the school building, something the response to covid-19 exposed. While affluent parents donated resources and funding to guarantee that their schools could implement covid-19 mitigation practices — notably mandatory masking and physical distancing — public schools that serve less-affluent, non-White children faced antiquated HVAC systems and windowless classrooms, making it difficult, if not impossible, to implement the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s covid-19 mitigation policies and practices.
Yet, while covid-19 certainly shed new light on health risks associated with substandard school conditions, the roots of the problem are much deeper. The racially biased policies and practices that elected leaders and public school officials that were implemented more than 100 years ago set the stage for underinvestment in public education and the wide variance in school facilities that serve White and non-White youths today.
Beginning in the late 19th century, the reliance on local funding, coupled with desires to maintain racially separate and unequal schools, drove inequitable School Funding patterns.
In 1875, for example, Black families demanded that St. Louis officials provide a high school for Black youths. School leaders reluctantly complied and opened the first Black high school in a building previously condemned and closed because officials felt it was unsuitable for White youths. Black families raised concerns about the substandard conditions inside the building as well as the school’s proximity to a local lead factory that generated smoky, polluted air near the school.
School officials refused to listen. Half of the city’s Black children attended this school, exposing them to these toxins. In 1880, school officials allocated $39,330 per White school and $14,600 per Black school. These funding differentials exacerbated educational inequality and generated substandard facilities for non-White schools.
-- Erika M. Kitzmiller and Akira Drake Rodriguez Northam’s $250 million HVAC investment leaves education advocates underwhelmed-- Virginia Mercury Virginia: July 27, 2021 [ abstract] Gov. Ralph Northam wants to allocate $250 million in federal relief funding for HVAC improvements in K-12 schools but education advocates and actual school system administrators want more equity in how the money is doled out and more flexibility in using it.
The investment in ventilation systems, a recurrent focus amid the COVID-19 pandemic, didn’t come as a surprise, said Chad Stewart, manager of education policy and development for The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. But he and many advocates, including other members of the Fund Our Schools coalition, say they were taken aback by the structure of the proposal, which must be approved by the General Assembly in a special session next month.
“What’s unique, at least based on the details we’ve seen so far, is the complete lack of equity,” Stewart said. Many of the state’s School Funding programs are based on a division’s local composite index — a measure of its ability to afford education costs. But under Northam’s proposal, localities would be required to use their own rescue funding required to match the state’s contribution, which would be calculated based on student attendance counts, for a total of $500 million.
In practice, the program would advantage large districts like Fairfax County while largely ignoring small, high-poverty districts without the same ability to pay, said Rachael Deane, director of the Legal Aid Justice Center’s JustChildren program. But for many local administrators, there’s an even more fundamental problem.
Since the start of the pandemic, Virginia schools have received more than $2.8 billion in federal aid earmarked specifically for public education. Divisions were given the flexibility to use that money for HVAC improvements, and many already have. In Richmond City, for example, there have been 47 completed upgrades since March of 2020, according to data from the state’s Commission on School Construction and Modernization. In Brunswick County, there have been 61, with another 189 still in process.
-- Kate Masters Why use the surplus for a tax cut when some Arizona schools are literally crumbling?-- AZcentral.com Arizona: June 20, 2021 [ abstract]
This year the state has the opportunity to address massive inequities in our education funding system. We have an unexpected budget surplus, a large “rainy day fund” and a one-time influx of federal dollars.
Yet rather than choosing to live up to the Constitution’s demand that the state provide a “general and uniform” public school education for all Arizona children, our legislators are considering a tax cut that predominantly benefits only the wealthiest Arizonans.
It doesn’t need to be this way. Our state has a unique opportunity this year to address the unfairness of a system under which districts with high property wealth consistently get to spend 300-400% of what districts without that wealth can spend on capital needs.
We could responsibly provide districts with the resources to keep their facilities in good shape, to buy buses when they are needed, to enable all school districts to have up-to-date technology, quality air conditioners, walls that are not crumbling, and reasonable safety and security to protect our students and teachers.
Instead, our legislators are being asked to vote for a budget that continues to shortchange our children.
Rich schools can fund repairs. Poor schools can't
For so many years, the Legislature and the governor justified gutting capital funding for schools on the basis that Arizona had to make difficult decisions because of the Great Recession. It is a fact that Arizona cut more School Funding during the recession than any other state.
And we have consistently ranked among the very bottom of states nationwide in our funding of schools. Our districts are being asked to educate our kids using $5,000 less per child than the average state. Year after year, our school districts’ capital budgets were slashed up to 85%.
-- Opinion - Daniel Adelman and Josh Bendor 'Need to haves' vs. 'nice to haves:' Greenwich forum to focus on school spending-- greenwich time Connecticut: April 24, 2021 [ abstract]
School Funding has become a hot issue in town because of the need to make emergency repairs at North Mianus School after a flood and ceiling collapse.
The League of Women Voters of Greenwich and the PTA Council will host a forum on the issue called “Fixing Greenwich Public Schools’ Infrastructure: The Plan and the Cost” via Zoom at 7 p.m. April 29.
The panel will include Superintendent of Schools Toni Jones; Board of Education Chair Peter Bernstein; Dan Watson, the school district’s director of facilities; Sean O’Keefe, the district’s chief operations officer; and Board of Education Vice Chair Kathleen Stowe.
The discussion will focus on funding improvements in the public schools as well as the process for setting priorities for projects. A question-and-answer session will follow.
Questions can be submitted and registration can be submitted at www.lwvgreenwich.org/. The discussion is free and open to the public.
League President Sandra Waters said the school’s master facilities plan will be discussed.
“Many (residents) do not understand what the facilities master plan is, what the district sees as high priorities and how much implementation will cost,” Waters said. “Some are already differentiating between its ‘need to haves’ and the ‘nice to haves,’ presumably to reduce the latter. The league encourages the public to be informed about what the plan includes, why and to make a personal determination about whether the work is necessary.”
The Board of Education recently sought $8.1 million from the Board of Estimate and Taxation for the emergency repairs at North Mianus. But the BET, in a contentious vote, reduced that amount to $2.1 million and pledged to approve additional funds after the Board of Education calculates a final price tag for the work.
-- Ken Borsuk Is Wyoming's school funding model about to fail?-- Wyoming Tribune Eagle Wyoming: March 14, 2021 [ abstract]
SHOSHONI – Annie Good and her co-teacher have made their fifth grade classroom a homey space for their 33 students. The room is in the south wing of the sprawling K-12 education complex in Shoshoni, a town of 649 people.
The $49 million school building, up the road from the abandoned storefronts downtown, can make visitors look twice, said Christopher Konija, Shoshoni’s police chief, who is also town clerk and treasurer.
“It’s like looking at two different worlds,” he said. “To me, the school – what it looks like and what it represents – shows the potential for Shoshoni.”
State spends big on K-12
The state-built, modern building is just one brick-and-mortar example of how Wyoming has poured its mineral wealth into its school system ever since the state Supreme Court heard a series of cases – starting in 1980 – challenging the equity and adequacy of School Funding in Wyoming. In 1995, the court found that legislators were, indeed, responsible for budgeting enough money to fund a ”quality” education for all Wyoming children. And though such findings are not uncommon nationally, the result in Wyoming has been to make it the biggest spender per student in the Mountain West and one of the biggest in the United States.
-- Kathryn Palmer Colorado Dems propose raising local property taxes to more equitably fund schools-- The Gazette Colorado: March 13, 2021 [ abstract]
Property owners in some Colorado school districts would see gradual tax increases over the next two decades, ultimately generating hundreds of millions more each year for K-12 education, under a bill backed by Democrats in the state legislature.
The bill is an effort to correct a longstanding problem in Colorado School Funding, that taxpayers in different school districts pay wildly different rates and the state is on the hook for making up the difference.
The result is that K-12 education now takes up more than a third of the general fund, crowding out other priorities from roads to human services even as Colorado funds schools well below the national average. The bill would shift more of the cost to local taxpayers and free up state money, potentially allowing total education funding to increase.
“The end goal is to make sure we’re fixing the broken system we have where some school districts have a lot of local support and others do not,” said state Rep. Daneya Esgar, co-sponsor of the bill and chair of the Joint Budget Committee. “The whole idea is to provide a more equitable way to fund schools.”
Superintendent George Welsh of the Cañon City school district said the proposal would create a more even playing field for districts. Taxpayers in his district already pay the maximum.
-- ERICA MELTZER Supreme Court Asked to Order NJ to Fund School Construction -- New Jersey 101.5 New Jersey: February 07, 2021 [ abstract]
TRENTON — School Funding is back before the state Supreme Court, which has been asked by the Education Law Center to order Gov. Phil Murphy and the Legislature to provide more money for school construction by the end of June.
School construction in the 31 mostly urban districts covered by the Abbott vs. Burke series of lawsuits must be paid for and managed by the state under a 1998 court ruling. The program is continuing some previously approved work but hasn’t had money to take on new projects in about six years.
The Education Law Center filed its most recent motion on Jan. 28.
“We’ve been trying to get the Murphy administration to step up and deal with this without having to get the court involved. Our preference would be to keep the court out of this,” said David Sciarra, the ELC’s executive director. “But to no avail. We’ve just been unable to get them to move on this, to kind of ask the Legislature for a specific amount of funding and put it on the table.”
“We’ve made every effort, is all I can say,” Sciarra said. “We’ve tried. We’ve bent over backwards to try to get cooperation from the administration, from the Legislature, and just have gotten nowhere. So, we’ve asked the court to step in.”
The law center went to the Supreme Court a year ago with a similar request, but it was dismissed as premature in anticipation that funds would be included in the 2021 state budget.
-- Michael Symons Battle over NJ funding for schools in poorest districts is back in court. Yet again-- NJ Spotlight News New Jersey: February 01, 2021 [ abstract] A four-decade legal battle over public School Funding has landed back in the New Jersey Supreme Court, with a prominent watchdog group accusing state officials of again ignoring a constitutional mandate to repair and replace aging and shoddy school buildings in many of the state’s poorest communities.
The motion filed by the Education Law Center (ELC) on Friday claims that since 2014, neither the governor nor the Legislature has provided any additional money toward the court-required funding. That has left the Schools Development Authority (SDA), the state agency tasked with compliance in this matter, virtually broke and unable to initiate any of the dozens of “urgently needed” construction projects it identified in 2019. The solution ELC seeks is that the court order state officials to come up with a spending plan by June 30.
“It’s too bad we have to regularly go back to the Supreme Court to make the state fulfill its obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education to our students,” ELC Executive Director David Sciarra said in an interview Friday. “Unfortunately, this administration has been no different in this regard than its predecessors.”
The lawsuit cites the SDA’s own report from last year, which noted there are 18,000 students “who don’t have the seats they need” in overcrowded schools, as well as 7 million square feet of school space in poor districts that is more than 90 years old.
-- IAN T. SHEARN Napa school district advised not to pursue bond funding measure this November-- Napa Valley Register California: July 03, 2020 [ abstract] The Napa public school system’s next appeal to voters for more funding appears to be at least two years in the future.
A survey sponsored by the Napa Valley Unified School District has revealed tepid support for a bond measure to build and upgrade facilities were it to appear on the Nov. 3 ballot. In a report shared with the NVUSD board last week, a potential $398 million property-tax levy reviewed by 625 likely voters garnered “definite” or “probable” support from 47.6 percent of respondents, well below the 55 percent approval required for school bond measures in California.
The study indicates that 43.3 percent of people interviewed would “definitely” or “probably” vote against additional School Funding this fall. (Another 9 percent were undecided or declined to give an opinion, according to the report.) Authors of the report pointed to lingering skepticism of NVUSD’s ability to manage its finances effectively or to fairly apportion new funding among schools – saying nothing of the sudden financial crises triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic slowdown resulting from shelter-at-home orders.
Given such roadblocks, staff members with True North Research, the Encinitas firm that conducted the survey, called on the Napa school district to hold off on a vote until at least 2022 and bolster public support for a funding boost in the meantime.
“We do not recommend that the District pursue a bond for the immediate opportunity of the November 2020 ballot – there are simply too many challenges to address effectively in a short period of time,” the report stated. “Rather, a longer and more deliberate path of community/stakeholder engagement and communication to build awareness, understanding, and ultimately consensus around the District’s facility challenges and their connection to student achievement is advised.”
-- Howard Yune Minnesota schools face uncertainty amid a pandemic-related budget crunch-- Star Tribune Minnesota: June 27, 2020 [ abstract] Minnesota school districts scrambling to prepare for an uncertain academic year are tallying the millions of dollars they'll have to spend — and that they could lose — as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are laptops and software and wireless hot spots to buy, in case classes again need to move online. If students return to school in person, there's also a long list of purchases to make buildings safe: sanitizer and hand-washing stations, plexiglass barriers, extra classroom supplies so students don't have to share.
Social distancing requirements may necessitate additional bus drivers to ferry smaller groups of children and more custodians to keep buildings clean.
Meanwhile, with some families assessing the risks and considering online school programs, home schooling or other options, school district leaders are worried about declining enrollment — and a related drop in revenue.
State government, which provides the largest share of School Funding, is facing a $2.4 billion deficit. And with the economy on shaky footing, passing local funding levies to make up for the budget gaps will be a challenge.
Ask superintendents in districts of all sizes what they expect their budget to look like in a year and they all agree: They just don't know. Making any single plan is impossible, because an announcement on whether schools will reopen, remain closed or implement a combination of in-person and distance learning isn't coming until the last week of July.
"The picture is kind of cloudy right now," said Jeff Drake, superintendent of Fergus Falls Public Schools.
-- Erin Golden When the waters rise, how will we keep schools open?-- The Hechinger Report Louisiana: May 23, 2020 [ abstract] CHAUVIN, La. — Izzy Allen, 13, has watched gas stations and grocery stores close. She’s seen vines grow over abandoned homes while other houses have been lifted on stilts, ten or fifteen feet off the ground. She remembers that her father, a shrimper, used to have to inch his boat carefully away from the dock behind their house so as not to hit the bayou’s narrow banks. The land has disappeared at such a rapid clip that he can pull it out easily now, even when another boat is passing behind his.
The eighth grader can also remember each of the kids she began school with back at Boudreaux Canal Elementary School. “All the teachers, all the kids, knew everybody’s name,” she recalled on a recent Friday afternoon. But that school closed after she finished first grade in 2013, a victim of declining enrollment after relentless flooding and job losses drove families from the area. The elementary she went to next, Upper Little Caillou, had replaced another nearby school that had shuttered for the same reasons a few years earlier.
Lacache Middle School, which Izzy currently attends, sits along the bayou on one of the lowest-lying tips of Louisiana’s Terrebonne Parish. Every year, she loses classmates who move farther inland or to Texas. It’s a scenario playing out across coastal Louisiana and in other areas of the country vulnerable to floods and storms that are worsening because of climate change. As sea level rise drives more and more to people seek higher ground — a phenomenon sometimes known as “climate migration” — those who remain will be increasingly left to make do with less. Hampered by School Funding formulas based on property tax dollars and student enrollment, these schools are already being forced to cut teaching positions and scrimp on materials and technology. Schools farther inland, meanwhile, are under pressure to accommodate arriving students — forced to increase class sizes and provide support for transient students who lose learning time with each move.
With at least 6,444 schools serving almost 4 million students located in parts of the country at high risk of flooding, it’s a set of challenges that’s only going to become more common. At Lacache, the question is already pressing: When families start leaving the areas on the front lines of climate change, what kind of education — and future — remains for those who stay?
-- SOPHIE KASAKOVE Rutherford County's school funding projects face delays because of 'uncertain times'-- Daily News Journal Tennessee: March 30, 2020 [ abstract] Plans to build an elementary school in southeast Rutherford County and an addition at La Vergne Middle by August 2021 may be delayed because of the coronavirus-impacted economy.
"We'll take that wait-and-see approach," Rutherford County Schools Director Bill Spurlock said Monday about a week after the County Commission Health & Education Committee postponed votes on his requested projects for August 2021. "In times like we are in currently, we have to look at alternatives."
Spurlock said his Board of Education may have to revise the district's $510 million building plan for a district adding over 1,000 students per year and depending on 153 portable classrooms. The plan for 2021 includes a $47.1 million elementary school on the southeast side near Epps Mill Road and Interstate 24 and a $21.4 million addition at La Vergne Middle.
-- Scott Broden Tabernacle to move elementary students to Olson Middle School-- Burlington County Times New Jersey: February 03, 2020 [ abstract]
TABERNACLE — The township school board voted Monday night to move some of its elementary school students into the middle school next school year, an effort officials say will cut costs as the district loses state funding.
The move will go into effect on July 1, and second- through fourth-grade students classes will relocate across the street from Tabernacle Elementary to Kenneth Olson Middle School. The measure passed by a 6-3 vote.
“That was probably the hardest decision any of us up here have had to make so far,” Board President Megan Chamberlain said at the meeting. “Not every one of us agreed, and I’m OK with that, because every option we had on the table stinks.”
“To have a different opinion on what stinks worse than the other is everybody’s prerogative. I do not begrudge any of my board members. It all stinks, and I hope none of you out there would begrudge any of us our opinion.”
According to estimates from the district, the move would save between $196,000 and $241,000 and help avoid staff layoffs and cuts to extracurricular programs.
Pre-K, kindergarten and first-grade classes will remain in the front wing of Tabernacle Elementary, and the back of the school would be closed, operating on a no-occupancy setting that maintains minimal heat and air-conditioning to avoid mold.
Because of low enrollment, there is enough room at Olson for four of each class from grades 2 to 8, board of education member Victoria Shoemaker previously told the Burlington County Times.
Tabernacle’s two schools serve just over 700 students, according to state data. The township sends students to Seneca High School, which is part of the Lenape Regional district.
The district estimates that it will lose about $2.6 million in state funding over a period of seven years. Due to changes in the state’s School Funding formula, aid to districts with shrinking enrollment or changing demographics is being phased out over seven years and being redistributed to growing districts, which had previously been underfunded.
The idea of consolidation has been met with mixed reactions from families, some of whom wished the district took more time to research the option.
-- Gianluca DElia 'If we had fair funding, our schools wouldn’t be in such disrepair': 3 takeaways from meeting with SDL's superintendent -- Lancaster Online Pennsylvania: January 22, 2020 [ abstract]
Overseeing 11,000 students on a daily basis requires great balance.
That’s particularly the case considering most of those students come from low-income households and about one-fifth are English language learners.
That’s one of the significant challenges facing leaders of Lancaster County’s largest school district: determining which services to provide, and which to cut, with a limited amount of resources.
School District of Lancaster Superintendent Damaris Rau and school board President Edith Gallagher both described how they deal with the struggles the district and its students regularly face, as well as what makes the district special, during an interview Tuesday with the LNP | LancasterOnline Editorial Board.
Here’s three takeaways from the conversation.
School Funding
Lancaster is facing a potential $10 million budget deficit this upcoming year. To close it, administrators and school board members are contemplating raising taxes, program cuts, increasing class sizes and leaving vacant positions unfilled.
But Rau and Gallagher suggest the district wouldn’t be in this position if the state offered more support.
Rau said only 8% of the state’s funding to the district goes through the basic education funding formula. Enacted in 2016, the formula accounts for objective measures such as enrollment and poverty. But only new money since the 2014-15 school year flows through the formula, leaving districts in need behind.
“If we had fair funding, our schools wouldn’t be in such disrepair,” Rau said.
-- ALEX GELI White Bear Lake voters approve state's largest successful school bond measure-- Star Tribune Minnesota: November 06, 2019 [ abstract] Voters in the White Bear Lake school district Tuesday approved a $326 million bond to fund construction projects across the district — the largest successful school bond referendum in Minnesota history.
The district expects enrollment to surge by about 2,000 students over the next decade, and school leaders are planning renovations and upgrades in every school building.
The bond also will fund the construction of a new elementary school in Hugo and allow the district to combine its split-campus high school into a single, expanded facility.
White Bear Lake was one of more than 30 school districts that asked voters to approve bond issues and take on debt for major construction projects, while more than 40 districts sought voter approval to renew or increase their local operating levies.
In another closely watched race, Worthington, Minn., voters approved three measures that will fund the construction of a new intermediate school and an addition to the high school, addressing longstanding problems with overcrowding in the southwest Minnesota district’s buildings.
Approved were bonds totaling nearly $34 million for the construction of the intermediate school and a separate plan that would allow the district to refinance $14 million to fund an addition to the high school.
The vote was the latest in a long series of School Funding elections for the community, which has become larger and more racially diverse in recent decades because of population growth from immigrant groups — including a large number of unaccompanied minors from other countries.
Since 2013, Worthington voters rejected five proposed bond issues. The most recent referendum was in February, when a bond issue failed by 17 votes.
-- Erin Golden Low-Income Students Are Returning to Dangerously Hot Schools-- talk poverty National: September 05, 2019 [ abstract] This week marks the last of the first days of school. In some school districts, classes have already been in session for several weeks, and they’ve been hot ones. Teachers are bringing fans from home and schools are closing because temperature control is too challenging.
Alex, a teacher in the Bay Area, says conditions in her school have been particularly bad this year; many buildings in the region are not designed for high heat, thanks to the historically temperate climate. Her classroom doesn’t have openable windows, so she uses a fan to try to suck air in from the cooler hallway, but it’s not enough.
“Students will ask to go to the bathroom more often just to get into the hallway where it’s cooler,” she told TalkPoverty. She said the heat makes students feel sluggish and unfocused, a problem particularly acute for young women in her class who struggle with body image, and stay tightly wrapped up even in high temperatures. “I also notice that I tend to run out of energy a lot faster on hot days.”
Not ideal for a high school teacher trying to keep order in a classroom of 16-year-olds, even one who loves her job and is passionate about education.
This is a problem that’s only going to get worse due to the confluence of rising temperatures thanks to climate change — average temperatures in the U.S. could increase by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and have already risen several degrees since 1900 — and declining School Funding. Schools that don’t overheat today are going to in the future.
Education budgets were cut deeply during the Great Recession and some states haven’t returned to their pre-Recession funding levels; capital spending across the country hasn’t recovered to pre-recession levels either. As a result, schools that urgently need temperature control updates along with other infrastructure improvements face an uphill struggle to increase their budgets.
-- S.E. Smith Maryland House Speaker Urges Support For More School Funding-- WJZ13 Maryland: July 13, 2019 [ abstract] GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s House speaker is urging her colleagues in the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland to make a robust education funding plan its top priority.
Speaker Adrienne Jones spoke Saturday at the caucus’s unity breakfast.
She is asking the 50-member caucus to make a funding plan to implement a state commission’s recommendations the No. 1 priority for the next legislative session, or however long it takes.
Jones, a Democrat, also is asking the caucus to put its weight behind the passage of a bill to add $2 billion in additional school construction over the next decade.
-- Staff Writer State funding delayed for years? Warren County district looks at other options for building new schools-- Journal-News Ohio: May 25, 2019 [ abstract] A slowdown in state funding for new school buildings won’t be a deterrent in plans being developed by the Franklin Board of Education.
On Monday, the board voted to move forward with a new building project through the state’s Expedited Local Partnership Program, which allows the project could be done in phases with the local share of funding being used up front to begin or do smaller projects until the state funding is available through the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission.
District officials were told April 3 that the Classroom Facilities Assistance Program would not be able to assist Franklin schools for until 2027 with its estimated $120 million project for new or renovated buildings.
A Journal-News review of state records recently showed that a jump in school districts winning voter approval of local School Funding projects last year combined with uncertainty surrounding future state funding from Ohio’s pending biennium budget, which must be approved by June 30, has forced OFCC officials into a slowdown.
“It’s simply a matter of more demand than available funding,” said Rick Savors, spokesman for the OFCC, said at the time.
-- Ed Richter County seeks action on school construction funding during special session-- WBALTV11 Maryland: April 25, 2019 [ abstract] TOWSON, Md. —
Baltimore County officials are making a last-minute plea for additional school construction money.
County leaders want Gov. Larry Hogan to permit lawmakers to take up a school construction bill during next week's special session. Some called the idea a longshot to have lawmakers add a School Funding bill to an agenda that has just one item to elect a new speaker of the House.
"Too many of our schools are aging. Too many of our schools are rundown," Baltimore County Executive John Olszewski said. "As the Legislature prepared to convene for a special session, I believe we have an opportunity to step up and do right by our children."
County officials said the right thing is more money to help replace rundown schools like Dulaney, Lansdowne and Towson high schools. It's money Baltimore County thought was on the way until a bill designed to secure the funding failed in the state Senate.
"This was Baltimore County's most important priority. In fact, it was the county executive's only priority, and it was such a shame that it didn't get passed," state Sen. Chris West said.
The lack of state funding put pressure on the county executive and Board of Education to make good on promises to build new high schools.
"It is vital that we have provide equitable, safe and healthy learning environments for each and every one of them," said Kathleen Causey, president of the Board of Education.
-- Tim Tooten Wisconsin voters again improve spending increase for schools, but some large building projects rejected-- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Wisconsin: April 10, 2019 [ abstract] Wisconsin voters in April continued a years-long trend of approving higher spending on schools in local district referendums.
According to Wisconsin Policy Forum report, voters approved referendum questions totaling $783 million. Total borrowing requests on school district ballots statewide reached $1.2 billion, with voters turning down some of the largest individual ballot items.
Voters approved 45 of the 60 questions on this year's ballot.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum report shows a 15 percent drop in approval ratings compared to last year when voters said yes to 90% of referendums on the ballot. Even so, 2019 ranked as the third-highest approval year since revenue caps were created in the 1993-94 school year.
"To get large numbers like these, you probably need a lot of things to happen at once," said Jason Stein, research director at the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Factors such as the economy and interest rates often indicate how the public will vote on school spending. A recent Marquette University Law School survey showed that voters felt it was more important to spend on schools than to lower property taxes.
Much of the support was found in increases for basic district operations, such as teacher salaries, school maintenance, transportation and classroom spending. Districts have said that state-imposed spending caps and Wisconsin's School Funding formula have caused them to turn to local voters to approve higher spending.
-- Margaret Cannon Senate backs interim committee on school construction, maintenance-- Idaho Press Idaho: March 19, 2019 [ abstract] The Senate just voted 26-7 in favor of a resolution to set up an interim committee to study Idaho’s methodologies for public school construction and maintenance in Idaho, which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Winder, R-Boise, said is a continuing problem that the three years of study of Idaho’s School Funding formula didn’t address, because it wasn’t within that panel’s purview. Idaho requires school district patrons to vote by a two-thirds supermajority to raise their own property taxes to pass a bond to build a new school. Voters also must approve tax levies for facilities improvement and maintenance.
-- Betsy Russell New Arlington Co. Board member wants schools to rein in construction costs-- Inside Nova Virginia: February 19, 2019 [ abstract] Arlington’s newest County Board members appears to be straddling the middle of the road when it comes to School Funding and its impact on homeowners’ tax bills.
In remarks to a local service organization, Matt de Ferranti telegraphed the likelihood that Arlington property owners would see a higher real-estate-tax rate this year, in part to pay for higher school costs. But at the same time, he said the days of gold-plated school facilities must come to an end.
“We need to bring down the cost per seat of our schools,” de Ferranti said at the Feb. 20 meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Arlington. De Ferranti said that teachers, not Taj Mahal-style facilities, were the keys to success for local students, and that spending should be prioritized to get the best educators available.
Whether de Ferranti’s call for restraint in capital spending will be heeded on the school side remains to be seen. Few of the current School Board members have made belt-tightening a priority.
An auditor’s report on school-construction costs last year essentially absolved school officials from blame on high costs, saying Arlington’s projects were more expensive than those of other jurisdictions for reasons ranging from heavy community engagement (read: demands of parents) and a lengthy and cumbersome process of winning county-government approval of new projects. But the report’s legitimacy was called into question after school leaders spent months holding on to it before releasing it to the public.
As for taxes, de Ferranti acknowledged it was “likely but not certain” that County Board members ultimately would vote to increase the 2018 real-estate tax rate of $1.006 per $100 assessed value, in part to pay for school costs.
-- SCOTT McCAFFREY Impact Aid back on school funding agenda-- Albuquerque Journal New Mexico: February 16, 2019 [ abstract] Jvanna Hanks, assistant superintendent of business services at Gallup McKinley County Schools, is continuing a decadelong dispute.
It’s an emotional one for her.
“It’s our priority to make sure our students who have seen generations of poverty get a chance, a real chance at succeeding,” she told the Journal, holding back tears.
The dispute is about Impact Aid, a federal funding stream for school districts that have a low property tax base because of tax exempt federal lands – like tribal lands – within their boundaries.
In New Mexico, districts that applied last year got about $78 million in Impact Aid.
The fight Hanks and other school district leaders are embroiled in at the state Capitol right now is how the state’s School Funding formula treats this money. Currently, school districts get all of the federal Impact Aid, but the state then deducts most of the amount from the formula it uses to determine how much funding the district receives from the state.
Specifically, New Mexico’s formula calculates a program cost for all the school districts, then, for districts that receive Impact Aid, the state takes credit for 75 percent of the federal money and gives the district the difference.
Gallup’s 2017-2018 program cost was calculated at $85 million, but after subtracting 75 percent of its $30 million federal Impact Aid, the state gave it $63 million.
-- SHELBY PEREA County And School Officials Consider Nontraditional School Construction-- Rhino Times North Carolina: January 28, 2019 [ abstract] “Thinking outside of the box” is one of the most clichéd phrases of all time, but it’s still a pretty good strategy when it comes to handling many difficult situations and it certainly is the strategy that the Guilford County Board of Education and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners are considering in light of hundreds of millions of dollars in capital projects that school system officials want to see in the coming years.
The Guilford County commissioners and school board members have a major facilities meeting coming up on Thursday, Jan. 31 and, heading into that meeting, the discussion is centered around innovative ways to save money on school projects going forward.
Most of those in the conversation agree that the first step in the process is putting underused schools to better use – but there’s also expected to be a need for some new construction in the coming years and one thing many seem to agree on is that Guilford County’s current method of building schools may have to be replaced.
One option, for instance, is a long-term lease-to-buy plan on specially built low energy consumption schools. In one model, a third party – perhaps a non-profit – builds the structure with energy-efficiency as a priority, gets grants and tax breaks associated with that method of construction, leases the building to the school system for five or ten years as part of a lease-to-own program, which also means the school enjoys radically reduced energy costs. In other parts of the country, versions of that model have been successful and have shaved millions off the usual cost of simply building and moving in.
Guilford County Board of Education Member Pat Tillman said that he and other school officials have been researching non-traditional School Funding and construction methods that seem to be working well elsewhere.
“With the traditional way we fund schools, we are never going to catch up,” Tillman said.
-- Scott D. Yost Iowa should act quickly on school funding-- Quad-City Times Iowa: January 09, 2019 [ abstract] After a divisive election season, the Iowa Legislature can get off to a strong, bi-partisan start this year by approving a long-term extension of the statewide one-cent sales tax that funds construction projects at Iowa's schools.
This, really, is a no-brainer. For years, Iowa school districts have relied on a one-cent sales tax to pay for an array of maintenance and improvement projects.
In fact, Scott County voters were among the first, in 1999, to approve of the tax to pay for building projects. Almost immediately, the proceeds from the tax were earmarked in Davenport for classroom renovations at Central High School, along with an array of other projects.
Other districts in our area also used the proceeds to improve their learning environments, with the penny sales tax becoming a vital, accepted, part of their budgets.
The sales tax has been around for so long that voters in all of Iowa's 99 counties approved it. And, in 2008, the state legislature converted it to a statewide sales tax, bringing equity to its distribution. It's now known as Secure and Advanced Vision for Education, or SAVE.
Still, this tried-and-true funding source is due to expire in 2029.
There is no doubt this funding is vital to our schools.
In Bettendorf, for example, the money is going toward construction of the new Grant Wood Elementary School. That's a big project, but the funds also have been devoted to other expenses, like heating and air conditioning costs, buses and tennis courts.
-- Editorial Mayor Stoney unveils $800 million plan to fully fund Richmond school facilities-- WTVR.com Virginia: December 20, 2018 [ abstract] RICHMOND, Va. – Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney has unveiled a plan that he says will fully fund the Richmond Public Schools $800 million capital plan over the next 20 years.
The School Capital Funding Plan would provide $150 million in the first five years, $200 million in the following five years, $212.2 million in the next five years, and $237.8 million in the following five years after that, totaling $800 million for school capital investments over 20 years.
Stoney says the School Funding plan does not rely on any real estate tax increase and will include the $150 million generated earlier this year when council approved a 1.5% meals tax hike to fund the renovation and replacement of crumbling Richmond school facilities.
“Starting with our $150 million investment in school facilities earlier this year, I’m proud that we were able to identify a path to fund the remaining capital plan for RPS, so we can get as many kids as possible into 21st Century schools as soon as possible,” said Mayor Stoney.
-- VERNON FREEMAN JR., Anne Arundel school officials hope to make dent in $2.1 billion project backlog with state funds-- Capital Gazette Maryland: December 17, 2018 [ abstract] Jennifer Brienza said her daughter was a year old when Old Mill High School was listed as one of Anne Arundel County’s construction priorities.
She’s 14 now.
“It’s certainly Old Mill’s time to be fixed,” said Brienza, a leader behind the movement to fund Old Mill construction. “We’ve waited longer than anyone else to be fixed.”
Old Mill is among several schools awaiting large-scale construction projects, and a new stream of state funding could make a dent in the district’s $2.1 billion backlog of infrastructure projects, according to school officials.
Gov. Larry Hogan last week announced plans to inject an additional $1.9 billion in school construction projects. State officials hope to accommodate 30 percent more project funding requests, thanks to a new constitutional amendment that requires casino revenue be used for School Funding.
It is unclear how much additional funding Anne Arundel County will receive; the state’s Interagency Commission on School Construction will determine which requests can be fulfilled, said Shareese DeLeaver Churchill, a spokesperson for the governor.
-- Lauren Lumpkin Harford school officials 'encouraged' by Hogan's plan to fund $3.5 billion in capital projects statewide-- The Baltimore Sun Maryland: December 13, 2018 [ abstract] What portion of the Harford public school system’s funding request for capital projects will be fulfilled by the state hasn’t been determined, but school officials are “encouraged.”
Harford County Public Schools’ capital funding request for Fiscal Year 2020 is more than $74 million, most of which is sought from the county. About $12.1 million, however, is requested from the state for projects that include roof and HVAC replacements, according to school system budget documents.
Gov. Larry Hogan announced this week that he plans to fund $3.5 billion in school construction projects across the state, in part because of a new constitutional amendment that adds casino revenue to School Funding.
Hogan said Tuesday he will submit legislation during the 2019 General Assembly session that would add $1.9 billion in new school construction projects over five years. That funding would be in addition to the $1.6 billion in public school construction funding included in the state’s five-year capital budget.
“We are encouraged by Governor Hogan’s announcement and look forward to receiving more information about the application, review, and approval process and how it could potentially benefit Harford County Public Schools,” Harford superintendent Dr. Sean Bulson said. “We will continue to utilize the Educational Facilities Master Plan, along with the Capital Improvement Program, to provide the Board of Education of Harford County with information as they evaluate future capital projects.”
-- Erika Butler Ohio Bill Could Direct School Funding Toward Air Conditioning-- the News Ohio: November 09, 2018 [ abstract] Columbus, Ohio — Ohio would be required to study which of its schools have air conditioning under a state lawmaker’s proposal to put school construction funding specifically toward meeting standards for climate control, among other school infrastructure improvements.
HB 738, introduced Oct. 4 by Rep. Niraj Antani (R-Miamisburg), requires the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) and the Department of Education (ODE) to study the status of school buildings regarding air conditioning, accessibility, and school safety. The bill also requires that once the study is completed, 25 percent of future school construction money be dedicated to air conditioning, disability accessibility, and safety.
The state lacks data on how many Ohio schools have air conditioning or how much it would cost to air condition school buildings in Ohio that do not already have it. Earlier this school year, a heat wave caused multiple Ohio schools to close or send students home early, sparking debate on social media from educators and parents over whether climate control is necessary for a good learning environment.
-- Staff Author Cleveland residents could protest school funding Thursday, but district didn't tell anyone-- The Plain Dealer Ohio: July 11, 2018 [ abstract] CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland residents upset about how the state is helping pay for new schools in the city could voice their complaints at a meeting in Columbus Thursday, instead of waiting weeks or months.
But few will be going. The school district didn't tell anyone about this week's meeting, saying protests now do not fit its strategy to win more money from the state.
The Ohio Facilities Construction Committee, the state panel that oversees state-funded construction, has its quarterly meeting Thursday - its first since the district started criticizing its decisions and recruiting people last month to protest them.
The district instead tried to drum up protests for an August conference the OFCC has in Independence and the panel's fall quarterly meeting in Columbus on October 25. Presentations to the public last month about its funding dispute listed just the August and October events, not the one this week.
"We have a number of advocacy efforts underway," said district spokesperson Roseann Canfora. "Interrupting their regular meeting is not one of them."
Elise Hara Auvil, of the Bond Accountability Commission, the city's school construction watchdog panel, questioned the omission and speculated that the district did not want to raise a protest at an OFCC meeting where the panel could add money to the district.
The OFCC will consider Thursday adding $3.7 million in state aid for the new John F. Kennedy and West Side high schools about to start construction.
-- Patrick O'Donnell Schools in Saco and Windham place high on priority list for state construction funding-- PressHerald.com Maine: June 14, 2018 [ abstract] Public schools in Saco and Windham placed among the top five in the Maine Department of Education’s latest priority list of school projects that could qualify for state construction funding.
In addition to the Young School in Saco and the Windham Middle School, which ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, Portland High School also made the list, placing 15th of 74 schools seeking funds. The school construction funding list was presented to the state Board of Education on Wednesday.
The board took no action at its Wednesday meeting. Districts that are unhappy with the way their projects were scored now have 30 days to appeal, according to the department.
“I am pleasantly surprised that Portland High School scored so well, but I certainly knew the school needed work,” Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling said.
The mayor said it is possible the state could fund repairs to the high school in the next round of School Funding.
-- DENNIS HOEY Voters in Portage County to weigh school funding, ATV questions-- Stevens Point Journal Wisconsin: March 27, 2018 [ abstract] As Portage County voters go to the polls on April 3, residents in Eau Pleine and the Almond-Bancroft School District area will consider referendum questions about ATVs and exceeding state limits on School Funding.
The Almond-Bancroft School District will ask voters to exceed state revenue limits on a recurring basis of $525,000 starting in the 2018-19 school year. Meanwhile in Eau Pleine, voters will decide whether to let the town board use discretion in allowing ATVs or UTVs on one or more selected roads.
-- Alan Hovorka Kansas School Funding Report In Hand, Lawmakers Confront Its Tough, Pricey Suggestions-- Kansas: March 19, 2018 [ abstract] Now that Republican leaders have a report they commissioned on School Funding, it’s not clear they’ll pursue its recommendations to spend more for better student performance.
Lawmakers continued digging into the numbers Monday and quizzed the study’s authors for the first time since the document was unveiled Friday.
The study suggests lawmakers boost school spending by up to 44 percent over five years. That would mean pouring an additional $2 billion into education. Legislators are searching for ways to respond to a state Supreme Court ruling that says schools aren’t adequately funded.
-- Stephen Koranda School funding remains one of biggest questions ahead of Murphy budget address-- Burlington County Times New Jersey: February 26, 2018 [ abstract] Murphy, who is expected to deliver his first budget proposal to the Legislature next month, hasn¡¯t set a timetable for how soon he hopes to keep one of his biggest, and arguably, most difficult campaign promise, although he has said he intends to ramp up School Funding as quickly as possible.
-- David Levinsky No easy fix to school funding-- The Robesonian North Carolina: February 11, 2018 [ abstract] LUMBERTON " With funding for public schools in Robeson County at rock bottom among North Carolina counties, local leaders are in agreement that our children deserve better.
A diverse group of leaders laid out their ideas in interviews last week.
-- Scott Bigelow Governor says one percent school funding boost part of ‘larger picture’-- Radio Iowa Iowa: February 06, 2018 [ abstract] Governor Kim Reynolds is signalling she’s likely to approve Republican legislators’ plan to provide a one percent increase in general per pupil support of Iowa’s public school. That’s a roughly $32 million boost " less than the $54 million increase Reynolds recommended last month.
-- O. Kay Henderson Schools next to last in local funding-- The Robesonian North Carolina: February 03, 2018 [ abstract] RALEIGH " The Public School Forum of North Carolina’s most recent report on School Funding shows Robeson County finished next to last in per-pupil spending for all of the state’s 100 counties, about $1,000 less than the state average, for the 2015-16 school year.
Robeson County’s government provided $525 per student for the school year in the report, while the state average was $1,568.
-- Scott Bigelow Senators press Trump to boost school funding in infrastructure package-- The Hill National: January 17, 2018 [ abstract] A group of 25 predominantly Democratic senators is pressing the Trump administration to strengthen public School Funding in a forthcoming infrastructure package.
In a letter to President Trump, Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) call on the administration to develop a partnership with states to fix the conditions of U.S. public schools.
-- Mallory Shelbourne Reynolds: 'Optimistic' for school funding equity fix-- Quad-City Times Iowa: January 12, 2018 [ abstract] Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds raised the possibility Friday that an overhaul of the state tax code could yield a solution to the inequity in education funding that's vexed school districts like Davenport.
The governor was in Davenport on Friday to tout her Condition of the State address. And in an interview, she said she's optimistic a bill can get through the legislature this year
-- Ed Tibbetts Is Paterson paying too little to educate its children?-- Paterson Times New Jersey: December 23, 2017 [ abstract] The city contributed $41.5 million to the school district’s 2017-18 budget. However, that’s less than half of the $91 million local taxpayers should have contributed to educate their children, according to an estimate based on the School Funding formula.
Local taxpayers underfunded the school district by $49.5 million, according to data from Newark-based Education Law Center. This combined with the state, which provided $401.4 million rather than the required $458.4 million, underfunded the district by a combined $106.5 million.
-- Jayed Rahman Middle Tennessee school districts grapple with growth-- Tennessean Tennessee: December 08, 2017 [ abstract] Crowded hallways, portable classrooms and teachers with carts instead of desks.
This isn't just a scene at an overcrowded Williamson County school; it's a reality for many districts in Middle Tennessee.
Areas surrounding Davidson County have seen their student populations spike in the last decade, spurring the need for costly new schools.
Williamson County has taken several steps to address growing School Funding needs. Will neighboring districts follow suit?
-- Melanie Balakit Can Philadelphia’s Retaking of its Its Local School System Become a Model for Community Control-- Atlanta Black Star National: November 06, 2017 [ abstract] After 16 years, Philadelphia is retaking control of its public schools from the state government. For the eighth-largest school district in the nation, the news is encouraging, as local control brings with it the promise of accountability, equity, and a more effective educational system for its children. For majority Black and Brown school districts such as Philadelphia, community control is a longstanding issue with racial implications, reflecting a history of struggle against what some think of as a neocolonial education. Specifically, white lawmakers and policymakers in the state capital control the education of Black children and dictate the terms " including inequitable School Funding, criminalization and profiteering " without community participation or democratic governance.
-- David Lowe Will Christie support new school funding plan?-- North Jersey.com New Jersey: June 15, 2017 [ abstract] Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto have reached a compromise on a new way for funding public schools, ending a months-long standoff between the powerful Democrats and possibly averting a government shutdown.
Whether Gov. Chris Christie, who has called for a new way to finance public education, will support the plan as a state budget deadline looms this month is unclear.
-- Nicholas Pugliese School sales tax returns to ballot-- AdVantage News Illinois: March 19, 2017 [ abstract] After six years, a School Funding sales tax proposition is back on the ballot in Madison County " and educators are making their case to voters to avoid another defeat.
In the April 2011 consolidated election, 80 percent of the county’s voters rejected a 1 percent sales tax for school facilities. Madison County Regional Superintendent Robert Daiber, who led the effort the first time, attributes the defeat partially to voters’ misconceptions.
“It was looked at as I wanted this because I was getting the m
- See more at: http://advantagenews.com/news/school-sales-tax-returns-to-ballot/#sthash.wv33Axcl.dpuf
-- Jason White Report Finds PA School Funding Inadequate, Unfair-- Public News Service Pennsylvania: March 15, 2017 [ abstract] PHILADELPHIA – Years of underfunding Pennsylvania's public schools has led to inequalities affecting low-income districts and communities of color, according to a new report.
The Education Law Center report, entitled "Money Matters in Education Justice," says the Keystone State ranks 46th in the nation for state share of revenue for public schools. And Pennsylvania is one of only 14 states with a regressive funding system, giving the fewest resources to the poorest schools with the highest needs.
According to Deborah Gordon Klehr, the Education Law Center executive director, that has led to glaring racial disparities in education funding.
"Schools with large populations of students of color receive less per-pupil funding overall than schools with a larger white-student population, and they're also shouldering higher local tax burdens," she said.
The report cites research showing that schools with the fewest white students receive almost $2,000 a year less per pupil.
-- Andrea Sears School funding initiatives stack Williamson commission agenda-- Brentwood (Tenn.) Home Page Tennessee: March 12, 2017 [ abstract] Here is what’s before the commission:
A new elementary school
Funding for a new elementary school in Brentwood is crucial, but it’s worth a $30.8 million vote.
The funding will be used for the design, development and construction for a new north elementary and middle school. Without the school construction funding, the district will have redo its entire rezoning plans.
This leaves the Brentwood area in a bind because it would not only mean scrapping rezoning plans for the entire county, it would also mean having to find room to place students. Elementary schools in Brentwood already sit at over 100 percent capacity.
Master plans
It’s a fairly hefty cost, but two Williamson schools have emphasized how these funds will fix the problem of overcrowding.
For Franklin High School "" which is at 110 percent of its capacity "" the cost comes in at around $9 million. Part of the plan calls for the acquisition of the former Columbia State Community College campus just north of Franklin High.
Plans for the Brentwood campus involve both the middle and high school campuses. Starting at $19 million, plans for Brentwood include everything from a new STEM center to more fan capacity inside the football stadium. Each school currently exceeds its capacity.
Other business
" $6.3 million for the design and new construction at College Grove Elementary and Scales Elementary Schools. This will help the overcrowding at both schools with the addition of new classrooms.
" $379,190 for 40 new special education assistants. This answers the need the district has had throughout the school year so far.
" $1.45 million for 13 buses " both regular and replacement, as well as four special education buses.
" $4.9 million for design and initial site work for a central high school, middle school and elementary school.
-- Emily R. West Florida Lottery is not the education jackpot you may think-- TC Palm (Fla.) Florida: March 08, 2017 [ abstract] The Florida Lottery is not the jackpot you may think it is for public education.
In 1986, when voters overwhelming approved the Florida Lottery, they did with the understanding its profits would "support improvements in public education" and not be a substitute for state funding.
But the lottery's website boasting it has poured more than $30 billion into Florida's schools over the past three decades doesn't tell the whole story. Lottery profits have replaced state funds, not provided extras for the classrooms.
ADVERTISING
â€"It still makes my blood boil a little bit when I see the lottery tout how many billions of dollars they've raised for education,†said Mark Pudlow, longtime spokesman for the Florida Education Association, the state's teachers union.
â€"Right away, the lawmakers just used that money, essentially put it into the regular pot, and education funding did not go up,†Pudlow said. â€"Over the years, education funding has gone down so that we're now once again one of the bottom states when it comes to spending for public education.â€
In a new national study about how states pay for public education, Florida got an â€"F†for effort. Florida also ranked near the bottom of states in how it spends tax dollars for education in the New Jersey-based Education Law Center's report, â€"Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card.â€
Education is funded primarily by local property taxes and state funds, which include sales tax and other revenues. The lottery proceeds were supposed to be additional money to provide schools with extras.
Yet exactly how the lottery money would be used to enhance education never was clearly defined in the law.
-- Kelly Tyko and Ginny Beagan An Education Funding Lesson from Kansas-- Nonprofit Quarterly Kansas: March 06, 2017 [ abstract] The School Funding ball is now back in the court of the Kansas legislature. Can it find a path through this policy thicket that will satisfy the Court’s evaluation and produce results? If so, Washington and the 49 other state capitals will want to jump on their bandwagon.
-- Martin Levine House takes first crack at fixing school funding-- Houston Chronicle Texas: March 06, 2017 [ abstract] AUSTIN -- The new House Public Education Committee chairman plans to increase per-student funding to public schools in an effort to fix the state's School Funding program derided by the Texas Supreme Court as riddled with problems.
House Public Education Committee Chairman Dan Huberty, R-Humble, said his bill will reduce the $77 million in recapture payments the Houston Independent School District is supposed to pay the state.Â
"Texas knows that it's time to help our children," said Huberty who said nearly every school district and every charter school will receive more dollars per student. Â
The bill comes with a roughly $1.5 billion price tag. It aims to increase the basic allotment by $210 per student, create new transportation funding, lower recapture payments, create a hardship grant and increase funding for students with dyslexia.Â
-- Andrea Zelinski Making the most of school funding opportunity-- fosters.com/EdgeRadio Maine: March 05, 2017 [ abstract] Maine's public schools will soon get a much-needed financial boost, thanks to passage of Question 2 last Nov. 8. Despite Gov. Paul LePage's huffing and puffing, the Legislature is unlikely to defy voters' expressed direction for the state to pay 55 percent of school costs — and some $167 million more a year will flow to K-12 education.
In addition to supporting schools, the 3 percent surtax on adjusted incomes of $200,000 and up will provide property tax relief for municipalities, which were staggered by LePage's cuts to School Funding — down from 53 percent in 2009 to 45 percent today – and a 60 percent reduction in revenue sharing.
-- Douglas Rooks Kansas school funding formula plans vie for legislative approval-- Topeka Capital-Journal Kansas: March 03, 2017 [ abstract] Lawmakers have begun sifting through a raft of school finance legislation, with several plans competing for attention in the early stages of a process aimed at producing a new funding formula.
Legislative attention is likely to intensify after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that School Funding is inadequate. In the wake of the decision, legislative leaders called on lawmakers to redouble their efforts at developing a new formula.
-- Jonathan Shorman Kansas Supreme Court Rules School Funding System Unconstitutional " Again-- The 74 Million Kansas: March 02, 2017 [ abstract] The Kansas Supreme Court ruled today that the state is not spending enough money on schools, harming the basic education of thousands of students, especially disadvantaged ones.
The decision portends a fight with the Republican-controlled legislature over how to remedy the situation and marks another chapter in a long-running political and judicial battle over School Funding in Kansas. Just last year, the state Supreme Court threatened to shut down schools, though lawmakers eventually complied with the court’s judgment demanding that more money go to schools in poor areas.
-- Matt Barnum Christie challenges N.J. Democrats to revamp school funding in final budget address -- The Inquirer (Phila.) New Jersey: February 28, 2017 [ abstract] TRENTON — Gov. Christie delivered his last budget address Tuesday, unveiling a $35.5 billion spending plan that was perhaps most noteworthy for what it did not include: a proposal he had pushed to dramatically redistribute School Funding.
Instead, the Republican governor called on the Democratic-led Legislature to work with him to create a new funding formula, and challenged lawmakers, who have failed to reach consensus on a plan of their own, to agree on an approach within 100 days.
â€"No phony task forces. No stupid blue ribbon commissions,†Christie said in the Assembly chamber, where he also called on the state's largest health insurer to fund addiction treatment and proposed contributing state lottery revenue to the public worker pension system.
-- Maddie Hanna & Andrew Seidman CPS could end school year on June 1 if state money doesn’t come-- Chicago Sun Times Illinois: February 27, 2017 [ abstract] District officials are asking Judge Franklin Valderrama to issue a ruling before the end of April.
“There’s no question that ending school early is our worst-case scenario,” Claypool told reporters at CPS headquarters on Monday afternoon. “I want to be crystal clear: We believe it is possible to avoid ending the school year early, but only if Springfield acts or Judge Valderrama enjoins the state from distributing funding in a racially discriminatory manner.”
He wouldn’t say when officials will announce their decision.
But shortening the school year on top of four previously imposed furlough days may not even fully close the budget gap. In court documents, CPS estimated saving $91 million, and an additional $5 million from canceling summer school for elementary and middle-school general education students. Claypool called those estimates “conservative.”
Chopping off 13 days will push CPS’ school year below the state’s legal threshold, meaning that some state aid will be jeopardized, too. ISBE requires 180 class days for full funding and counts CPS as having four more days than required.
Claypool said CPS attorneys believe they have even more wiggle room.
The district still has to find or cut $129 million, the bulk of a $215 million gap left in December after Rauner vetoed a bill containing that money for teacher pensions. Rauner said the conditions to enact statewide pension reform that legislators had agreed to hadn’t been met.
In a prepared statement, Rauner’s education secretary, Beth Purvis, said, “As children statewide continue to be impacted by the state’s broken School Funding formula, now is the time for CEO Claypool to engage in a constructive process to pass a balanced budget with changes that would help schools across the state, including those in Chicago.”
She was referring to ongoing state budget negotiations in the Legislature that may include the $215 million for CPS pensions.
Since the veto, school officials have scrambled to cut spending and have cut about $88 million so far in centrally provided training and school-based “freezes” CPS opted for instead of layoffs. So far they have not generated any new revenue.
They “froze” $46 million by taking half of what schools had left in discretionary spending accounts for recess monitors and after-school programs and classroom supplies, but were pressured into giving $15 million back to low-income schools after the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that they lost twice as much money as wealthier schools.
The furloughs that officials have already imposed coincide with staff training or planning days so children wouldn’t lose any school days. That measure, aimed at saving $35 million, provoked the Chicago Teachers Union, which accused CPS of targeting its mostly female membership with a pay cut.
CTU vice president Jesse Sharkey called the potential loss of three weeks of school “pretty devastating” for students and for his members who now face a 9 to 10 percent pay cut.
Sharkey renewed calls for the city to go after more revenue from a commuter tax or a tax on Chicago’s wealthiest citizens.
“We have the combination of a governor who doesn’t care about public education, and local leadership who have been unwilling to really fight for the kids on solutions that would tax the people who could afford it,” he said.
Emanuel had fought tooth and nail to extend the school year in 2012 from 170 days to 180. The extra time was a key reason teachers then walked out on strike.
Ald. Howard Brookins (21st), chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee, said closing CPS on June 1 would be untenable " and not simply because it would make a mockery of Emanuel’s vaunted longer school year.
“I would hate that it would come to this. Not that my kids won’t be jumping for joy that school is ending earlier. But parents won’t have been able to plan for this at the beginning of the school year, and it would be so disruptive for learning,” Brookins said.
“I admit that the last day or two of school are probably throwaway days for learning. They don’t do much instruction and the kids are not really focused. But to cut out nearly 20 days of school is untenable,” he said. “There’s got to be a way around it. I don’t believe the mayor will go along with it. If you were doing this on a straight business decision, it may make logical sense. But it doesn’t make good political sense. And it’s not in best interest of the children of Chicago.”
Chicago homeowners have already been hit with $837 million in property tax increases for police, fire and teacher pensions and school construction.
Brookins said he does not believe the City Council would be willing to go beyond that to stave off a shorter school year.
“I don’t know that the money would come fast enough,” even if there was the political will among aldermen to do more to help CPS, he said.
More information about CPS’s legal case can be found at http://cps.edu/pages/equality.aspx
-- Lauren FitzPatrick and Fran Spielman Editorial: Public school funding remains contentious-- The Record (N.J.) New Jersey: February 27, 2017 [ abstract] One thing is certain. Finding an equitable, constitutional way to provide state funding for schools is not going to be accomplished through another series of town hall-style meetings that pit the rich against the poor, or that ignore the funding dilemmas facing the Clifton-type districts in the state.
What’s needed is sensible give-and-take, and a workable formula that takes into account the needs of all New Jersey schoolchildren.
-- Editorial Board Funding Students Based on Need and Not Head Count-- Nonprofit Quarterly National: February 27, 2017 [ abstract] The Education Law Center and Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education has just published “Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card” and a companion study, “Is School Funding Fair? America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts.” Together, they analyze School Funding using recent U.S. Census data on School Funding along with broader economic data to depict how current state funding formulae meet the needs of our children.
The value of any given level of education funding, in any given location, is relative. While all districts need a level of funding that is sufficient to meet the needs of their students, relative funding levels are also consequential. How a district’s funding compares to that of other districts operating in the same regional labor market, and, in addition, how that money relates to other conditions in the regional labor market, affects a district’s ability to compete.
Public education is supported by a mix of federal, state, and local funds that has remained relatively flat for the past decade. With federal funding making up only around 10 percent of the total, the actual funding level per pupil results from a combination of state and local funds that depends heavily on the approach taken at a state level. According to Education Dive, the data show that not all states are effective at ensuring education funds get to the children with the greatest needs. Only “Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and Ohio are all taking spending on low-income students seriously, while most other states are not. In those five states, which all have what the report calls ‘generally high’ funding levels, significantly more money is funneled to districts with high levels of student poverty.”
-- Martin Levine State treasurer doing Nevadans a grave disservice-- Las Vegas Sun Nevada: February 27, 2017 [ abstract] No amount of public relations spin can bring Senate Bill 302, which authorized Education Savings Accounts (ESA) vouchers, back to life. ESAs are dead.
Last September, the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously struck down SB 302 as unconstitutional, siding with parents of public school students who challenged the controversial voucher law. SB 302 authorized the Nevada treasurer to take funding from Nevada public schools, estimated at $40 million in the first year alone, to pay for private and religious school tuition and other private education expenses. The justices ruled the voucher law violated the constitutional ban on using public School Funding for any other purpose and ordered the program shut down.
A final order has been issued in the case, putting a permanent end to the voucher program under SB 302. The court order is clear and unequivocal: SB 302 is unconstitutional and can’t be implemented.
Yet, despite the court injunction, Treasurer Dan Schwartz, who was charged with administering the now-defunct voucher law, continues to act as though SB 302 is still on the books. In November, Schwartz brazenly announced his office was keeping the ESA program open. To this day, he continues to encourage new families to sign up. Buried on his website is the disclaimer that if you sign up, or have already signed up, no funding is available to actually pay for the vouchers.
-- Opinion: David Sciarra Arizona may face another billion-dollar school lawsuit-- The Republic (Ariz.) Arizona: February 26, 2017 [ abstract] Less than a year after voters passed Proposition 123 to resolve a $1.6 billion lawsuit over School Funding, a new, even larger education lawsuit looms " and almost nobody is talking about it.
While the first lawsuit focused on underfunding per-student payments to schools for operational costs such as teacher salaries, this latest dispute centers on nearly a decade of cuts to capital funding for textbooks, technology, buses and building maintenance. Attorneys have warned of a lawsuit for years.
Now, they say they could file one within the next month.
Gov. Doug Ducey in his budget proposal included an additional $17 million to the School Facilities Board for building maintenance, but he continued hundreds of millions of dollars in annual cuts directly to schools for other school maintenance and soft capital such as technology.
Since 2009, ongoing cuts in this area have topped $2 billion.
-- Alia Beard Rau N.J. budget drama: Will Christie make final push for drastic school funding changes?-- NJ.com New Jersey: February 26, 2017 [ abstract] As Gov. Chris Christie prepares to deliver his final state budget address Tuesday, the drama centers on one question:
Will he try to use the state's spending plan to force action on his controversial School Funding proposal known as the "Fairness Formula"?
-- Samantha Marcus and Adam Clark Schools seek help from the state to pay for building repairs-- Montana Standard Montana: January 29, 2017 [ abstract] HELENA — One issue dominated testimony to the School Funding Interim Commission last year: a backlog of major maintenance statewide. But legislators disagree on how best to help districts — or if they can afford to do so at all.
A District Court judge ruled in 2008 that the Montana Constitution requires the state to chip in for significant school repairs and updates. Yet, state leaders have repeatedly failed to provide enough funding or to adjust regulations about district budgets that make it difficult to save money. The challenge is largely twofold: State assistance must be adequate and it also must be equitable so a student in Grass Range receives an education equal to one in Missoula.
Two programs the state had used to assist some schools in recent years went unfunded or underfunded in the 2015 session. Both are on the chopping block this session as legislators debate how much responsibility the state has to pay for these projects and the fairest way to divide the money between the state's more than 400 districts.
-- JAYME FRASER Ann Arbor Schools' new sinking fund would raise $200M over 10 years-- mlive.com Michigan: January 26, 2017 [ abstract] ANN ARBOR, MI - Ann Arbor voters will have a School Funding decision to make on May 2: Are they willing to raise their taxes to help Ann Arbor Public Schools fund facility upgrades throughout the district?
The AAPS board of education voted 5-2 on Wednesday, Jan. 25, to put a sinking fund increase proposal on the May ballot. The school district currently levies a 1-mill sinking fund that's set to expire in 2019. The new request is for a 2.5-mill tax that extends for 10 years.
There are three main areas of need that prompted AAPS to seek a sinking fund increase, Superintendent Jeanice Swift said: renew, replace and repair infrastructure at aging school buildings; expand facilities to meet the demands of growing enrollment; and complete projects that are partially funded by the $33 million bond voters supported in 2015.
Currently, AAPS' sinking fund generates about $8 million a year for the school district, and by law, sinking fund revenue must be spent to purchase real estate, build or repair school buildings and facilities and to acquire or install technology.
The median home value in the City of Ann Arbor in 2016 was $325,000, which equates to a taxable value of about $162,500. The owner of a home with a $162,500 taxable value currently pays $162.50 a year for the AAPS sinking fund millage.
-- Lauren Slagter Instead of “fixing” schools with federal dollars, fix their roofs-- The Denver Post Colorado: December 10, 2016 [ abstract] Republicans insist we address our nation’s crumbling infrastructure and create jobs.
Democrats demand equity in School Funding.
Here’s a bipartisan proposal on how to spend federal funds for our K-12 schools " more wisely than we just spent $7 billion under the Obama administration.
Fix their roofs and boilers. Make our schools safe.
I’m sure Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., sees the inequity for schools on the Eastern Plains. In November, his home county turned down the request for a $17 million bond issue to renovate and expand Yuma High School (1,086 against and 1,008 for). Gardner knows the struggle for small rural communities. Just in his former congressional district, similar bond requests also failed in Cheyenne County ($7 million request), Crowley County ($5.7 million), and Rocky Ford ($4.5 million).
I’m sure Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., understands why the new federal law, Every Student Succeeds Act, shuts down the largess of the School Improvement Grant (SIG). The U.S. Department of Education tell us that the Obama administration “has invested over $7 billion (since 2009) to transform more than 1,800 of the country’s lowest performing schools.”
But did it?
-- PETER HUIDEKOPER JR. Voters approve bond issues in 16 Colorado school districts, but reject others-- The Denver Post Colorado: November 10, 2016 [ abstract] At least 16 Colorado school districts came out big winners Tuesday, with voters approving a total of $3 billion in bond issues that will help build new schools and expand and improve others.
In all, 26 school districts put up regular bond issues for voters totaling $4.2 billion, a record-setting sum for Colorado. Eight of the bond measures failed, according to the Colorado School Finance Project, which tracks School Funding.
At least two bond and tax measures are still being decided, including in Fort Collins, said Tracie Rainey, the project’s executive director.
“When you look at the regular bond issues, you are looking at a fairly good success rate,” Rainey said. “Since the Great Recession a few years ago, it’s about a 50 percent for bond issues.”
-- MONTE WHALEY PSD exaggerated deferred maintenance needs-- Coloradoan Colorado: November 05, 2016 [ abstract] Poudre School District officials exaggerated the district's deferred maintenance needs by more than $415 million during efforts to pitch voters a $375 million bond issue to build new schools in Tuesday's election.
District officials, namely Executive Director of Operations Pete Hall, have claimed $500 million in deferred maintenance throughout the election, but a Colorado Open Records Act request by the Coloradoan revealed the district's deferred maintenance tallies just shy of $85 million. Deferred maintenance represents building upkeep that the district has delayed due to funding restrictions.
The district did not publicly disclose the misrepresentation until prompted by the Coloradoan's records request for deferred maintenance line items and costs. Spokeswoman Danielle Clark said an "overbroad categorization" of maintenance needs had occurred throughout the past 18 months during the district's long-range planning process.
Bill Werst, president of the anti-bond organization Citizens for Sustainable School Funding, said the misrepresentation is proof of the need for more transparency from the district. Werst has advocated for PSD to make available detailed plans and cost estimates for new schools included in the bond and to reduce proposed construction costs to either reduce the maximum bond amount or tackle more of the district's deferred maintenance.
-- Sarah Jane Kyle Forest trust lands help fund schools, fuel rural economy-- The Seattle Times Washington: October 07, 2016 [ abstract] EVERYONE should understand the vital role that state-owned forest and agricultural lands play in providing funds to K-12 education and in Washington’s rural economy.
Washington citizens own 2.1 million acres of state-forest trust lands, and these lands are managed by the state Department of Natural Resources for the benefit of various trust beneficiaries, the largest of which is the state’s K-12 school system. Money from timber sales and agricultural land leases provide a substantial and dependable revenue stream to the Legislature and local school districts, greatly helping to fully fund basic education and school construction " more than $124 million in 2015 " plus more money in timber sales from lands held in trust for counties.
State trust lands accounted for 45 percent of Washington’s total contribution to K-12 school construction in the 2007-2009 biennium. Of course, timber revenues are not the entire answer to solving K-12 School Funding, but they are a vital part of the overall funding plan. These revenue sources do matter " a lot.
When Washington became a state in 1889, Congress granted the state millions of acres of federally owned land, creating stable and permanent funding for primary, secondary and higher education. These lands are protected by a trust created by federal law and enshrined in the state’s constitution. This permanent state-forest-trust-land system has funded billions of dollars in school operations and construction over more than a century.
-- Jim McEntire Equity in funding public schools still eludes policymakers-- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Georgia: September 18, 2016 [ abstract] At least seven commissions have attempted to remedy School Funding inequities in Georgia without success, a record not atypical for school finance reform across the country.
In most states, School Funding relies on property taxes, which hinge on local will " how much a local community is willing to tax itself for education " and local capacity " how much those taxes will raise " rather than how much it actually costs to educate a child.
As imperfect as the approach may be, Americans seem reluctant to break with it, likely because it works for higher-income communities. Those communities contend they should be able to provide greater resources for their schools if their taxpayers are willing to do so. States attempt to equalize disparities in high- and low-wealth areas, but a gap remains.
During the 2017 legislative session, Gov. Nathan Deal is expected to seek changes to Georgia’s decades-old school-funding formula based on his own recent reform commission but it’s doubtful he will delve too deeply into the property tax debate. No one else has.
-- Maureen Downey Bay Area developers battle increased fees aimed at alleviating overcrowded schools-- East Bay Times California: July 24, 2016 [ abstract] As the real estate markets for Fremont and Dublin soar with new home sales, the schools that house all those new students are bursting at the seams and looking to developers for help building classrooms.
The state agreed. In a precedent-setting act -- after repeated pleas by the Dublin and Fremont school districts -- a state board overseeing school construction declared in May that state funds for new school construction are not available, triggering the highest-level fees on homebuilders that the law allows. But those builders are fighting back, in a battle that could have implications for School Funding around the state.
Last month, the California Building Industry Association slapped the State Allocation Board with a lawsuit the same day the panel voted. A Sacramento judge issued a tentative ruling this week favoring the districts and the state, but did not make a final decision during a court hearing Friday. The association declined to comment for this story.
The board's decision to raise fees that overcrowded school districts can charge housing developers for building new schools was seen as a long-awaited victory.
-- Joyce Tsai Rent-a-school plan would risk Robeson Co. school funding-- The News&Observer North Carolina: June 20, 2016 [ abstract] Robeson County near the southern tip of North Carolina is poor. Unemployment is high, property values are low and the prospects for new industry are dim. Not surprisingly, Robeson’s schools " like others in poor regions of the state " struggle to pay for instruction and provide adequate school buildings.
People connected to the construction business now say they have a fix to make it easier for the county to replace out-of-date schools buildings, but State Treasurer Janet Cowell’s office is right to caution Robeson officials to beware of it.
Developer Robbie Ferris came up with a plan to get legislators to allow Robeson school officials to redirect money allocated for personnel " custodians, clerks, substitute teachers " and use it instead to help pay for long-term leases on new buildings. Ferris is head of architectural and development interests. Aaron Thomas, president of a construction company that builds schools around the state, is the manager of a Robeson economic development group that’s pushing for the bill. And the bill’s main sponsor in the state Senate is Sen. Wesley Meredith of Fayetteville, who owns a landscaping company that has worked with Thomas’s company.
-- Editorial Board Wichita BOE approves maintenance contract ahead of potential school shutdown-- KWCH12 Kansas: June 20, 2016 [ abstract] WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH)Schools could be less than two weeks away from shutting down, and the Wichita School Board is taking steps to be prepared.
Lawmakers will meet in Topeka this week for a special session to respond to a Supreme Court order to make the School Funding system more equitable. If no agreement is reached schools could be forced to close at the end of June.
Monday night, the Wichita school board approved a $50,000 contract to make sure district buildings don't fall apart if a shutdown happens. An outside company will be responsible for keeping an eye on the district's more than 100 buildings.
"Actually, it was a very easy issue to pass, I think that's probably the easiest level that we will look at," said school board president Betty Arnold.
It's a small sense of security as school district employees across Kansas are unsure what will happen to them come July 1.
"It's scary. For one, a lot of people don't know if they're even going to receive a paycheck," said Ken Hinkle, Facilities Director for Wichita Public Schools.
-- Rachel Skytta Washington Co. to increase property tax for school funding-- wjhl.com Tennessee: June 07, 2016 [ abstract] WASHINGTON COUNTY, TN (WJHL) " Residents of Washington County, Tennessee may soon see a significant increase in their property tax.
The Washington County Commission has agreed on eleven important projects to address what they are calling ‘capital needs’ for the county.
These projects focus on education and taking the necessary steps to improve school facilities.
The funding of these projects is expected to require a 40 cent property tax increase, raising the current rate of $1.98 to $2.38.
This would increase the property tax by $150 a year for property worth $150,000.
Mayor Dan Eldridge says that while a tax increase is not ideal, these funds provide a recurring stream of revenue to pay for the long-term capital needs of Washington County.
“I don’t like the idea of a 40 cent tax increase,” Eldridge said, “I don’t think that any of the county commissioners like the idea of a 40 cent tax increase. But quite frankly, the county commission has its back against the wall right now. They don’t have a lot of options. The needs are very real. The needs have to be met.”
Eldridge said the long-term benefits of these projects will make the property tax increase worth it.
-- Will Morris Kansas Parents Worry Schools Are Slipping Amid Budget Battles-- New York Times Kansas: May 31, 2016 [ abstract] PRAIRIE VILLAGE, Kan. " Dinah Sykes, a parent of two boys in a suburb of Kansas City, started noticing changes to her children’s public schools a few years ago. Class sizes were growing. The school library had stopped buying books.
So she used her position as the president of the parent-teacher association to start a new tradition: Instead of bringing cupcakes to class for their birthdays, students were asked to bring a book to donate to the school library.
Ms. Sykes is a Republican who once voted for the governor from her party, Sam Brownback. But now, she said, she is so concerned that public schools are endangered by the state’s budget crisis that she is running for a seat in the State Senate, challenging the incumbent senator in the Republican primary in August.
“We’re getting a bad reputation: that our state doesn’t care about public education,” Ms. Sykes said. “We live in Kansas because of the great quality of life, the great schools, the great amenities. I want my boys to have the opportunity to have the same.”
The struggle over School Funding in Kansas reached a new crisis point when the State Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Republican-dominated Legislature had not abided by its constitutional mandate to finance public schools equitably, especially poorer districts with less property wealth. The court, in an effort to force legislative action, reiterated a deadline that gave the state until June 30 to fix the problem or face a school shutdown.
-- JULIE BOSMAN More rural Iowa school districts plan to close their doors-- SFGate Iowa: May 29, 2016 [ abstract] DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Once again, the end of a school year means the end of several school districts in Iowa, continuing a trend seen for decades but one that doesn't get easier for the communities involved.
Because of the closure of the Farragut Community School District and merging of two others, classes won't resume after summer vacation at three schools in southwest Iowa. For students, it will require traveling extra miles to reach school, but for the communities it will be more than an inconvenience.
"It's a town of about 500 people here, so there's a bar, a post office and a bank. And then we've got the school," said Lisa Spencer, the principal who oversees 120 students who attended Farragut's seventh through 12th grade school. "That's what makes it even tougher to deal with. It's not just the loss of a school. It feels like it's the loss of a community."
The Iowa Board of Education made the rare decision to dissolve the school district in November, making it the third time the state has forced a school district to shut down, said Staci Hupp, an Education Department spokeswoman. The board made the decision after the district repeatedly overspent and failed to meet education standards.
Since Iowa School Funding is based on student enrollment, many rural districts have struggled to keep their student numbers up amid declining populations. U.S. Census estimates released earlier this year showed that 71 of Iowa's 99 counties have lost population since 2010, and the trend stretches back decades.
-- Aleksandra Vujicic, Associated Press Uncovering the Stark Disparities Behind School Money-- Pro Publica National: May 16, 2016 [ abstract] Why do many school districts fail to meet the needs of their students? One commonly cited response is our country’s disparate School Funding system: because most districts rely heavily on local property tax for funding, schools in poor districts are often left with fewer resources than schools in wealthier areas. Even though School Funding issues play out on a local level, in recent decades, it’s risen to the forefront of national issues. This past year, for the tenth year in a row, a national Gallup poll found that Americans view lack of financial support as the largest problem facing America’s schools.
But can more money really fix America’s struggling, poor schools? That is exactly what NPR’s Cory Turner and a team of over 20 NPR member-station reporters wanted to find out. After six months of investigating, Turner and his team published a series of stories digging into School Funding disparities from Chicago to Sumter County, Alabama. ProPublica education reporter Annie Waldman spoke with Turner to learn more about their investigation.
-- Annie Waldman Pa. school-funding bill goes into effect Monday-- abc27.com Pennsylvania: April 25, 2016 [ abstract] HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) " Part of Pennsylvania’s budget will become law Monday nearly 10 months after it was due.
The bill distributes money to fund school districts and authorizes borrowing for school construction costs.
Governor Tom Wolf said he’ll allow the bill to go into effect without his signature. It’s a companion bill to the full budget.
School districts will get $200 million in state aid under the bill. Deciding which districts should get the most money was a major part of the debate at the state House.
Wolf wanted $400 million for School Funding, but the state only got half of that. Republican lawmakers pushed against it because they didn’t want any new tax increases.
The bill also authorizes up to $2.5 billion in borrowing for school construction costs. Districts complained they’ve been waiting for years for that money.
Wolf also allowed the main budget bill to go into effect without his signature last month. That came after a long fight with the Republican-controlled Legislature.
-- Dawn White Report Shows Systemic Inequity in a State-By-State Analysis of Investment in American School Infrastructure-- Center for Green Schools at USGBC National: March 23, 2016 [ abstract] Washington, D.C. " (March 23, 2016) " The State of Our Schools: America’s K-12 Facilities report, released today by the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the 21st Century School Fund and the National Council on School Facilities, shows that the nation faces a projected annual shortfall of $46 billion in School Funding, despite significant effort on the part of local communities.
“One out of every six people in the U.S. spends each day in a K-12 public school classroom, yet there is very little oversight over America’s public school buildings,” said Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and founding chair, USGBC. “It is totally unacceptable that there are millions of students across the country who are learning in dilapidated, obsolete and unhealthy facilities that pose obstacles to their learning and overall wellbeing. U.S. public school infrastructure is funded through a system that is inequitably affecting our nation’s students and this has to change.”
The report features an in-depth state-by-state analysis of investment in school infrastructure and focuses on 20 years of school facility investment nationwide, as well as funding needed moving forward to make up for annual investment shortfalls for essential repairs and upgrades. The report also proposes recommendations for investments, innovations and reforms to improve learning environments for children in all U.S. public schools.
“The data on funding school infrastructure paints a clear picture of the importance of a national conversation regarding the way improvements are funded. The conversation surrounding student achievement must also include a component addressing the places where our children learn,” said Mike Rowland, president, National Council on School Facilities and director of Facilities Services for the Georgia Department of Education.
-- Leticia McCadden Berea, Middleburg Heights Mayors support Berea City Schools' construction, school closure proposal-- Cleveland.com Ohio: February 22, 2016 [ abstract] BEREA, Ohio -- Despite the mixed reviews of bond issue-weary residents, Berea and Middleburg Heights Mayors Cyril Kleem and Gary Starr both support the Berea City Schools' proposal to renovate, consolidate and reconstruct the district.
"Children need a healthy environment to learn and thrive, that includes updated and modern school facilities," said Starr. "Governor John Kasich has made massive cuts to School Funding at the local level that has put enormous pressure on our taxpayers and schools. The Berea school district's building plan is a step in the right direction."
The proposal -- which will likely be redrawn in the weeks ahead -- calls for Berea-Midpark High School to be demolished and rebuilt for $75.5 million, with the other $25 million paying for renovations to Middleburg Heights Junior High School, Ford Intermediate School and Big Creek Elementary School.
-- John Deike Pender County OKs another $2.8 million in school funding-- StarNews Online North Carolina: February 16, 2016 [ abstract] HAMPSTEAD -- That the array of school renovation and construction projects is proceeding in Pender County was underscored Tuesday night at a meeting of the Board of County Commissioners.
Because of the Presidents’ Day holiday, the board met in the Hampstead Annex rather than the county office complex in Burgaw.
Commissioners approved the release of another $2.8 million to fund ongoing school renovation and construction projects through June. The board is taking the money from its general fund account, with plans for reimbursement after the initial bonds are issued, probably about June, when the new fiscal 2016-17 budget is in place.
Voters approved up to $75 million in school bonds in November 2014.
The commissioners continue to question the school board closely about the projects, worrying that some schools " including the new K-8 facility near Surf City " will be at or near capacity from opening day. On top of growth across Pender, particularly in the east, the state has reduced allowable student/teacher ratios, which also serves to lower school capacities.
-- Bill Walsh Interim panel tackles Montana school building needs-- Billings Gazette Montana: January 20, 2016 [ abstract] Do Montana's kids have an equal opportunity to receive high quality public education?
Does the Legislature fund public education at a level that develops â€"the full educational potential of each person"?
Every 10 years, the Montana Legislature appoints a School Funding Commission to take a fresh look at these questions to ensure the state is meeting its obligation under the Montana Constitution. This review considers many aspects of School Funding, including the complex formula that distributes a â€"guaranteed tax base†to every school district. The current commission includes 12 legislators (six from each party) and four members of the public.
Since the commission meets so seldom, the importance of its work is magnified. As a member of the commission, my intent is to alert Montana voters to issues that may affect them and their communities across the state and give them the opportunity to contact me and other members to express their opinions. I will try to capture what I learned at the meetings, but my words do not represent the views of the commission as a whole.
Adequacy issues
Probably the thorniest problem is state funding for school facilities. In the case of Columbia Falls Elementary School District. No. 6 v. the State of Montana (April 2004), District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock ruled in favor of public school districts: â€"… that the current Montana School Funding system violates Article X, Section 1 of the Montana Constitution in that it fails to provide adequate funding for Montana's public schools.â€
In the list of conclusions to support his decision, Sherlock wrote: â€"Adequate and safe school facilities are an essential component of a quality education system.â€
-- KATHY KELKER Report: Kansas needs state oversight of local school bonds-- KWCH12 Kansas: January 19, 2016 [ abstract] A new report from Republican legislators in Kansas says the state needs to provide greater oversight over local school construction projects.
The report approved Tuesday recommends creating a legislative committee. It would review proposals from school districts to issue bonds for construction projects when a district will receive state aid to help with the cost. It also suggests that lawmakers limit the projects eligible for state aid.
The state helps poor districts with bond payments. The cost of that aid has jumped.
The report is from a House-Senate committee that studied School Funding issues last fall. The committee is recommending that Kansas overhaul how it distributes more than $4 billion in aid to its public schools.
-- Associated Press Wyoming schools get in line for funding-- Billings Gazette Wyoming: November 22, 2015 [ abstract] CASPER, Wyo. — The number of elementary students in Gillette is growing, and Campbell County School District No. 1 is trying to accommodate an increasing number of kids in a limited amount of space.
It's not the only district facing such a dilemma. Laramie County School District No. 1, the largest district in the state, has an increase of 100 to 200 elementary-aged kids every year, said superintendent John Lyttle.
â€"We've got 38 classes that are (in) modular (buildings),†Lyttle said. â€"That's the size of a school, a school and a half.â€
But Wyoming is experiencing a downturn in oil and gas revenue that has legislators suggesting tighter budgets. Money for building and maintaining schools, funded for years through coal lease income, is disappearing.
The Wyoming School Facilities Department is responsible for organizing and prioritizing school facility projects across the state.
The Select Committee for School Facilities is funding only the department's highest priorities. The committee has drafted a bill for School Funding that sets aside about $200 million from 2015 to 2018 to pay for a variety of projects, from new construction to security cameras. Some of that was appropriated in the last budget session.
But the amount spent on schools in the next four years will likely be half of what was spent in the four previous years, said Rep. Ken Esquibel, D-Cheyenne, a member of the Facilities Committee.
School districts requested more than $360 million for the 2017-18 biennium alone.
-- Heather Richards Declining coal production will cut Wyoming school funding-- Washington Times Wyoming: November 20, 2015 [ abstract] Falling demand for coal means funding for Wyoming school construction is drying up, state financial analysts told lawmakers on Friday.
Wyoming has directed billions in bonus funds from the sale of federal coal leases to support state school construction in recent decades.
However, demand for coal has been falling nationwide recently in response to low natural gas prices and stiffer federal emissions regulations on coal-fired power plants. Analysts are warning that the days of hefty coal lease bonus checks are likely over.
Analysts with the state’s non-partisan Legislative Service Office briefed members of the state’s Joint Revenue Committee Friday.
Don Richards, LSO budget and fiscal administrator, said that in the two-year funding cycle that covered 2013-14, the state’s School Capital Construction Account received $736 million. He said the current estimate for the 2019-2020 funding cycle is just $26 million.
“Is that a guarantee? Absolutely not,” Richards said. “Coal prices could double, oil prices could double, natural gas prices could double from where they are today. Those would certainly revise our projections from where we are going forward.”
-- Ben Neary - Associated Press Coal downturn clouds school funding outlook-- Star Tribune Wyoming: August 07, 2015 [ abstract] For the past 13 years, Wyoming's energy boom translated into a similar boom in school construction.
The state spent $3.2 billion, building 74 new schools and modernizing an additional 35.
Coal was largely to thank. When companies lease land to dig, they are charged fees called coal lease bonuses, a significant percent of which goes toward school facilities.
But times have changed. Now, as the coal industry reels, school facility funding appears headed for trouble.
There are now only seven leases from which the state draws money. Within the next year, that number will shrivel to two and then zero by fiscal year 2018.
Overnight on June 30, 2017, the state's capital construction fund will go from receiving $120 million in coal lease bonus payments to exactly nothing.
This does not bode well for the Wyoming School Facilities Department, the agency responsible for overseeing school projects in the state, as the majority of the revenue it receives comes from coal lease bonuses.
-- Nick Balatsos ‘What’s next?’ school facilities chief asks-- codyenterprise.com Wyoming: July 08, 2015 [ abstract] While little more than half of Wyoming school facilities are in good to excellent condition, the remaining are in fair to poor condition.
With that good-news, bad-news assessment, the director of the Wyoming Department of Education says state school facilities face an as yet undetermined direction.
“During this process of learning more about where we’re going, we’ve discovered that we’re coming to a crossroad,” Bill Panos said.
After taking a deep breath, he began his comments at the Legislature’s Select Committee on School Facilities meeting July 1 at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody.
Panos’ remarks came after the education panel spent the morning talking about school budgets, funding building projects and looking at graphs to assess the “hard and soft landing” for the future of state schools.
“We’re not going to be done with capital projects, and capacity issues and efficiency issues, but we’re getting caught up to the backlog,” he said. “The simple question with a really complicated answer is ‘What’s next and what is the right next for Wyoming?’”
$3 billion catch-up
One direction the state’s school facilities department may take is laid out in a 28-page draft plan by 21st Century School Fund consulting firm.
Led by Mary Filardo, the Washington, D.C., firm spent the past four months looking at Wyoming School Funding, budgets, capital investment for building projects, major and routine maintenance and asset preservation.
-- JANICE DOWNEY Poll: Californians Willing to Borrow Big in 2016 to Help Schools-- KQED News California: April 22, 2015 [ abstract] The times may change, but Californians don’t seem to do so when it comes to two things about K-12 public schools: a sense that they need money for construction and renovation, and a willingness to borrow the cash to make that happen.
The latest example: A new statewide poll that shows relatively strong support for a 2016 school construction bond, even as the idea continues to be quietly fought in Sacramento by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Wednesday night’s poll from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California finds 55 percent of likely voters support the general concept of a school bond on the November 2016 ballot. Broaden the sample size to all adults, and PPIC finds even more " 66 percent " who like the idea.
“Our polling consistently shows that local School Funding is the top priority,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s president and pollster.
The PPIC survey takes the collective California temperature on a number of education-related issues. But the school bond may be the most politically pressing, given the rollicking debate in Sacramento over the issue.
-- John Myers Schools scramble to meet rules on all-day kindergarten, smaller classes-- The Seattle Times Washington: April 12, 2015 [ abstract] At Des Moines Elementary, a basement storage room that flooded each winter was repaired and repurposed as a kindergarten classroom. With voters rejecting two bond proposals to build schools and add classrooms, better facilities are likely years away.
Highline is one of 261 districts in Washington struggling to plan for new classroom space to meet upcoming state mandates for all-day kindergarten and 17-to-1 student-teacher ratios in grades K-3.
The mandates are set in the McCleary decision, a 2012 Washington Supreme Court order on School Funding that said lawmakers were not fully paying for basic education and were relying too much on local tax-levy dollars. Since then, lawmakers have been seeking money to hire more teachers but have done little to supply the classrooms needed to house those classes.
A recent survey of Washington school districts by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) found more than 5,500 additional classrooms will be needed to satisfy the McCleary requirements.
That adds up to an estimated $2 billion in new schools across 261 of the state’s 295 school districts, according to Gordon Beck, OSPI director of school facilities and organization.
-- DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP, Associated Press U.S. House holds Congress on record to improve Native schools-- nncnow.com Minnesota: February 27, 2015 [ abstract] St. Paul, MN (NNCNOw.com) -- A push is underway to improve deteriorating tribal schools across the nation.
The U.S. House of Representatives has unanimously approved Rep. Rick Nolan's amendment for tribal School Funding.
The amendment puts Congress on record that Native children should not attend school in buildings that are dilapidated or deteriorating, which may negatively affect academic success.
In his remarks on the House floor, Nolan specifically pointed out the struggles of the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota.
Nolan says this school is housed in an old pole building which has severe structural problems.
"The Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School is cold and drafty in winter, hot in summer, and unfit for children and teachers in any season. Students endure rodent and bat infestations, roof leaks and holes, mold and fungus, a faulty air system, uneven floors, poor lighting, sewer problems, and dangerous electrical configurations," Rep. Rick Nolan (D) Minnesota said.
-- Ramona Marozas N.H. House sends school funding bills to finance committee-- Seacoastonline.com New Hampshire: February 18, 2015 [ abstract] The House is sending bills that would give more state aid to growing school districts and reinstate money for school construction projects to the finance committee to calculate the costs.
Lawmakers voted to send the bills to finance Wednesday without debate.
Schools receive at least $3,500 per student in state aid, but growing districts cannot receive more than 108 percent of what they got the year before. One bill would raise that cap to 115 percent, a change Gov. Maggie Hassan included in her state budget.
The second bill would establish $50,000 for school construction projects each biennium. Schools used to receive help from the state for building expansions on repairs, but in recent years the state has only spent money on paying off the debt from old projects.
-- Associated Press Needy Ward 6 Students Received Unequal School Funding-- Hill Now District of Columbia: February 11, 2015 [ abstract] Eastern High School has more at-risk students than any other public school in Ward 6, but schools with less need received more per-student funding.
A new interactive graphic shows the designated at-risk funds provided to every D.C. public school in 2014, compared with the number of students eligible to benefit from the money.
The D.C. Council voted in Dec. 2013 to provide $2,097 in extra funding for every student who is receiving welfare or food stamps, homeless, in foster care or is at least a year behind in high school. But because of a time crunch in the budget process, the funds were used to support programs D.C. Public Schools said were aligned with the needs of at-risk students, as Greater Greater Washington reported.
Here are some of the highlights of the data mapped by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute and the volunteer “civic hackers” group Code for D.C.:
Eastern High School (1700 E. Capitol St. NE) received $1,145 for each of its 609 at-risk students, who made up 60 percent of total enrollment. Uses of the funds included special education teachers and middle grade field trips and activities.
Capitol Hill Montessori @ Logan (215 G St. NE) received $19,297 for each of its 33 at-risk students, who made up 10 percent of total enrollment. Uses of the funds included extended day funds, a guidance counselor, an English teacher and a math teacher.
-- Andrea Swalec Conflict Ahead Over California School Bonds-- Bond Buyer California: January 15, 2015 [ abstract] LOS ANGELES — The budget proposal California Gov. Jerry Brown submitted last week is fueling a conflict over state bond funding for K-12 education.
The $113.3 billion general fund budget Brown released Jan. 9 would provide a sizable increase in operating funding for schools.
But the budget documents demonstrate Brown's continued skepticism about whether the state should have a significant role in capital funding for local school districts.
The state's robust revenue figures trigger additional money under the state's School Funding formula for K-12 schools and community colleges. The governor also budgeted nearly $1 billion toward paying down School Funding deferrals made during lean budget years.
On the capital side, however, citing what he called in his budget summary "significant shortcomings" in the program, Brown wants the state to scrap its current bond program, which provides school districts with matching funds.
That program is almost out of money, and Brown signaled that he won't support a new school bond authorization under its current structure.
The program is overly complex with over 10 different state agencies providing fragmented oversight responsibility, said H.D. Palmer, a Department of Finance spokesman.
Educational lobbyists teamed with the California Building Industry Association in an effort to go around the governor.
Calling the effort Californians for Quality Schools, they filed ballot initiative language with the attorney general's office on Jan. 12 for a $9 billion state school facility bond measure.
Supporters hope the measure will be cleared to start gathering signatures for a measure to be placed on the ballot in 2016, said Dave Walrath, president of Murdoch, Walrath & Holmes, a Sacramento-based lobbying firm that specializes in public education.
-- KEELEY WEBSTER S.C. Lawmakers Ask Court to Rehear Rural School Lawsuit-- Education Week South Carolina: December 31, 2014 [ abstract] South Carolina lawmakers and Gov. Nikki Haley have petitioned the state Supreme Court to rehear a lawsuit that accuses the state of inadequately funding rural schools according to an article by The State.
In November, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in favor of the 29 rural districts, which filed a lawsuit in 1993 seeking more funding from the state. In the ruling, the court ordered rural districts and the state to work together to improve school facilities, recruit better teachers, and update the state's School Funding formula to more equitably distribute funds to poor, rural schools.
In the petition filed Tuesday, state lawmakers say the court "overlooked recent education initiatives put in place by (Haley's administration) and the General Assembly that will directly affect rural school districts in South Carolina." The petition also refers to the court order as "vague and practically unworkable," and contends that the governor and legislature should have exclusive authority to make such decisions for public schools.
More than 40 percent of students in South Carolina attend rural schools, according to a report by the Rural School and Community Trust, and those students score lower relative to rural students in nearly every other state on national standardized exams. Nearly 10 percent of rural adults in the state are unemployed, and 56 percent of rural South Carolina students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.
-- Jackie Mader Judges rule school finance inadequate in Kansas-- The Topeka Capital-Journal Kansas: December 30, 2014 [ abstract] A three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that Kansas public School Funding is not adequate, in an opinion that faults the Legislature for linking funding to local sources.
In a ruling more than 100 pages long, the Shawnee County District Court stood by its 2013 ruling that School Funding is unconstitutionally low, but declined to order the state to inject a specific amount of money.
However, the judges provided potential funding scenarios that the plaintiff’s lawyer said could cost the state an additional $548 million to $771 million a year.
The judges found that the state’s present public education financing system " in both its structure and implementation " is not “reasonably calculated” to have all students meeting desired educational outcomes. They were also critical of lawmakers for shifting the funding burden from the state to the local level.
“We find that as the financing system now stands, one cannot classify the school financing structure as reliably constitutionally sound because the legislature has tied its constitutional duty to the unenforceable precept, yet parochial illusion, of local control and local funding choices as one linchpin for the assurance of constitutionally adequate funding,” the judges ruled.
Though judges Franklin Theis, Robert Fleming and Jack Burr avoided mandating a funding level, they did point to a year when they said Kansas School Funding appears to have been constitutional.
In 2009, when the state’s base aid to schools climbed above $4,400 per student and the state was funding its other kinds of school aid " such as aid for building maintenance " at their full statutory levels, Kansas schools “had the apparent necessary fiscal capacity” to achieve the desired student outcomes.
Since then, however, “financial pillars” were eroded " base aid fell and the state didn’t make its other aid payments in full " which “turned, and still turns, the K-12 system on itself harming its students.”
The judges also put forward a range of funding scenarios that would be constitutional.
-- Jonathan Shorman and Celia Llopis-Jepsen School funding disparity in Minnesota getting attention-- Spring Grove Herald Minnesota: December 23, 2014 [ abstract] The increasing gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” has been a national, even global, concern over the past several years. Minnesota school administrators, particularly those in Greater Minnesota, have started to raise concern about a similar gap in one particular area " deferred maintenance funding for schools.
It isn’t quite a 1 percent vs. 99 percent economic gap that has become a rallying cry across the globe, but there is significant inequity between the largest 7 percent of school districts and the rest of the districts in Minnesota regarding deferred maintenance. Funding for deferred maintenance of buildings and other facilities is needed for such things as replacing old, drafty windows, repairing leaky roofs, installing security cameras, repairing sidewalks and taking care of other needs.
The Minnesota Rural Education Association points out that the 25 largest districts in the state, which have half the student population, are able to spend $2.79 per square foot on deferred maintenance while the other 314 districts, with the other half of Minnesota’s students, only spend an average of 58 cents per square foot.
Kingsland Superintendent John McDonald brought this disparity up to his school board during a recent meeting. He also told a community group that the district has invited State Sen. Jeremy Miller and Rep. Greg Davids to discuss the issue in individual meetings this winter and school administrators from throughout southeastern Minnesota will bring the subject up at an annual legislative forum between area legislators and school officials in February.
The MREA contends that rural districts face a fallout in facilities because student safety, technology, space for early learners and deferred maintenance needs go unmet in too many rural districts. This means that either facility life expectancy is reduced or general education dollars are siphoned away from programs and staff to deal with facility needs.
When one of the 25 largest districts has a roof leak or other problem with a building, it can raise tax dollars without voter approval for school facilities through the alternative facilities program. The rest of the districts in the state have to dip into the general fund for sudden repairs or win voter approval of a tax request to pay for costly infrastructure repairs.
-- David Phillips Why Doesn’t Arlington Ask Developers for School Funding?-- ARL Now Virginia: December 03, 2014 [ abstract] In Arlington, when a developer wants to redevelop a property to replace it with a bigger, taller building, the county often receives funding for affordable housing, transportation, streetscape improvements and public art. These “community benefits” from the developer are usually worth millions of dollars.
None of it goes directly to Arlington’s public schools, facing a capacity crisis with no end in sight.
The reason, according to officials, is Arlington’s development approval process, which was codified more than 50 years ago. Builders apply for site plans, and, by state law, community benefits from site plans can only legally be used “to mitigate immediate impacts,” according to County Attorney Stephen MacIsaac.
While a public art contribution is considered an immediate impact for a large apartment complex, for instance, a contribution to schools is not.
What the county is allowed to negotiate are “amenities that are contained within the project, like streetscape improvements, public art, the appearance of the building in general,” MacIsaac told ARLnow.com. “That system does not allow for charges for schools or public safety or running the libraries.”
In neighboring, suburban jurisdictions, developers negotiate benefits like these through the proffer system. In Loudoun County, which has opened 12 new schools in the last five years, the government pegs school costs as high as $37,791 per single family unit, and $11,294 per multifamily unit. Through proffer negotiations, Loudoun asks developers to pay for 100 percent of the estimated capital intensity factors, which includes roads and public safety, according to Loudoun Assistant Director of Planning and Zoning John Merrithew.
-- Ethan Rothstein Will Bedford County lose state funds if two schools don't close?-- WDBJ7 Virginia: October 27, 2014 [ abstract] BEDFORD, Va. -
The Bedford County School Board has a tough decision to make. In a few weeks, it will decide whether to close Thaxton Elementary.
Earlier this year, the board voted to close another school: Body Camp Elementary. The superintendent and several school board members have said that schools have to close, to keep the school system from losing a special amount of state funding.
When the city of Bedford reverted to a town last year, the change allowed Bedford County Public Schools to get an additional $6.2-million every year for the next 15 years.
To receive the money, the school system had to undergo an efficiency review. They completed the process in May and one of the document's major recommendations was to close two schools.
Is that action required for Bedford County to get the extra money? The short answer: not necessarily.
Delegate Scott Garrett sits on the House Appropriations Committee, which allocates School Funding. He believes Bedford County was only required to complete the efficiency review itself, not carry out its recommendations.
"The efficiency review has been done. The county and the town are in full compliance with the wishes of the General Assembly," Garrett told WDBJ7 Monday.
But State Senator Steve Newman, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, believes the school system will have to prove it's being efficient.
"What the General Assembly has said is that we're going to require you to do an efficiency review. Once you go through that process, we expect you to follow most of the recommendations," Newman said.
-- Tim Saunders WCSD officials say they need to build more schools -- KRNV-DT Reno News4 Nevada: October 02, 2014 [ abstract] RENO, Nev. (KRNV & MyNews4.com) -- Tesla is coming to Northern Nevada. So is a UAV company, Ashima, and other tech companies are likely to follow.
With more business comes more people looking for homes and schools.
A big part of the conversation during the Tesla special legislative session was about how Washoe County schools were going to fit extra students.
District officials say - even without growth from Tesla - they need at least three more schools.
"Every week we enroll families who moved into newly built homes in our area," said Double Diamond Elementary School Principal Kristell Moller. "We know the wave is here."
Double Diamond currently has about 850 students in a school built for 738.
Moller said the six portable classrooms they have help, but they don't fix the school's overcrowding.
"That doesn't increase the size of the cafeteria, or the size of the library, or the parking lot, or the size of the hallways," she said. "We need a new school."
Area Superintendent Chad Hicks agrees.
"It will continue to be an issue," he said. "The projected growth over the next ten years I believe is 14 thousand new students."
Hicks said the problem is district-wide and several schools in his area are facing the same challenges as Double Diamond.
"Right now Damonte Ranch High School is over capacity as well," he said. "Teachers they see what's happening in their neighborhoods, all the new growth, and so there's a little bit of concern there."
District Chief Operations Officer Pete Etchart said he doesn't see how they can continue with only the current buildings.
"I think we really need to find a solution to build new schools," Etchart said.
Etchart said they need three schools. That would cost upward of $120 million and the district doesn't have the money to build them.
Government Affairs Director Lindsay Anderson said because of Tesla School Funding should be a major priority in the legislature this spring.
"The importance of addressing the school facilities needs this session [is] undeniable," Anderson said. "I haven't heard anybody doubt that. It will just be trying to find a solution that we can all agree on that will actually address the need."
-- Staff Writer Nearly 70 city charter schools covered by suit seeking facility funds-- NY Chalkbeat New York: September 16, 2014 [ abstract] A new School Funding lawsuit filed upstate could be a boon for nearly 70 charter schools in the five boroughs.
The lawsuit, filed Monday by four families from Buffalo and one family from Rochester, claims that the state shortchanges students in charter schools by not providing money for space. And while the complaint focuses on funding disparities in upstate cities, their claims would also apply to dozens of New York City charter schools that still aren’t guaranteed facilities funding.
The legal attack represents the latest front in a lengthy battle over charter school facilities funding, which has its roots in the 1998 law that first allowed charter schools to open in New York. Charter schools do receive some state funding, but they weren’t given access to the state’s building aid program, which subsidizes district school construction projects. When schools opened in private facilities, they had to set aside a chunk of their operating budget"meant for teachers and school supplies"toward expenses like rent, security, maintenance, and renovations.
In New York City, those costs can add up. Brooklyn Prospect Charter School Executive Director Daniel Rubenstein told Chalkbeat earlier this year that he had to set aside a little less than 20 percent of his $13 million budget to replace fire alarms, upgrade bathrooms and install a new science lab in addition to paying rent and other facilities expenses.
Most of the nearly 200 charter schools that opened under Mayor Michael Bloomberg received free space in city-owned buildings. But 68 charter schools, serving 25,000 students, operate in private buildings and spend, according to one tally, an extra $2,300 for every student on facilities.
-- Geoff Decker Amid coal uncertainty, Wyoming school construction funds projected to waver-- Casper Star Tribune Communications Wyoming: July 27, 2014 [ abstract] When a company wants to dig for coal in Wyoming, it pays a one-time competitive fee to help its bid stand out from what is usually a crowd of companies vying for the right to mine.
Over the past 10 years, those fees " called coal lease bonuses " have paid for more than $1 billion in school construction around the state.
But if the industry continues its current trend, that money will dry up in 2018.
Back-to-back unsuccessful bids on coal-rich lands resulted in no new coal leases in Wyoming in 2013. As a result, the state’s latest fiscal profile shows coal lease bonus revenue dwindling to zero by 2018.
That has Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, concerned.
“As it stands today, it doesn’t look good,” Landen said.
Landen chairs the state Legislature’s Select Committee on School Facilities. Without significant coal leases in the near future, Wyoming must change the way it pays for new schools and school renovations, he said.
Lawmakers say they will resolve the situation. Many point to School Funding as a high priority, and several said enough savings likely exist to fund some school improvements until a long-term strategy can be developed.
-- LEAH TODD Catania seeks to shift school renovations, add at-risk funds-- Washington Post District of Columbia: May 14, 2014 [ abstract] D.C. Council Education Committee Chairman David A. Catania is proposing to delay reopening the old Spingarn High School for several years in order to pay for renovations at existing schools, where parents have been advocating for improvements.
The move would allow Catania " a mayoral candidate who has made education a key issue in his race against council colleague Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) " to give those parents what they’ve been seeking.
Catania (I-At Large) also wants other changes to Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s proposed spending plan, according to the committee’s draft budget recommendations. Dozens of schools would see up to $100,000 each in additional funds for at-risk students, for example, while a few charter schools would receive a total of $1.4 million to fill gaps in
summer-School Funding.
The committee is scheduled to vote on the proposed changes Thursday before sending them on to the council for consideration.
The most dramatic shifts are expected to be in Gray’s school-renovation budget, which triggered protests from disappointed parents in recent weeks.
Spingarn, in Northeast, is not the only vacant building with a slated renovation that Catania would like to delay. Northwest’s Shaw Middle, which had been scheduled for a $50 million overhaul beginning in fiscal 2016, would have the bulk of its work pushed back to fiscal 2019.
The delays would allow for investments in existing schools, which parents say desperately need renovating. But the changes also would derail Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to turn Spingarn into a vocational training center and a linchpin in the city’s efforts to revitalize career and technology education.
-- Emma Brown Districts may have funding flexibility to repair and improve school facilities-- EdSouce California: April 24, 2014 [ abstract] To weather deep cuts in public School Funding, many California school districts shifted much-needed dollars away from repairing and maintaining their buildings to keep teachers in the classroom and save instructional programs from being eliminated.
Now, the state’s new funding formula, which allocates much of the increased school revenue to high-needs students, provides some latitude for districts to fix their ailing buildings too.
While there has been an assumption that only base grant dollars " the funds allocated to districts for all students " can be used for building repairs and improvements, that’s not necessarily the case under the Local Control Funding Formula’s current regulations. But what’s considered an allowable use of money targeted for high-needs students " defined as English-language learners, low-income children and foster youth " gets somewhat murky when it comes to school facilities.
Included in the eight priorities that school districts must address in their state-mandated Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs), which identify how districts will allocate their funding, is a goal to ensure that school facilities are maintained in “good repair.”
Jeff Vincent, the deputy director of the Center for Cities & Schools at UC Berkeley, said the healthy school facilities goal has “flown under the radar” throughout accountability plan discussions.
The Center for Cities & Schools is hosting a daylong forum Friday at the California Endowment office in Oakland, which will include sessions that will further explore how districts should meet the healthy school facilities goal. The Center for Cities & Schools is a research and technical assistance center that promotes high-quality education as a means to support urban development.
-- Karla Scoon Reid State lawmakers consider borrowing against Lottery to build schools-- The Olympian Washington: February 26, 2014 [ abstract] A bipartisan plan for paying for public schools emerged Wednesday in the state House, offering a creative way to pay for $700 million in school construction by borrowing against $50 million a year in future state Lottery profits.
The Legislature is under a state Supreme Court order to fully fund schools by the 2017-18 school year, and most talk about School Funding has centered on school staffing and operations.
The proposal unveiled Wednesday would help the state meet its duty by providing hundreds of new K-3 classrooms across the state in time for the expected class-size reductions, according to House Capital Budget Committee chairman Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, and Rep. Drew MacEwen of Union, the No. 2 Republican on the committee.
“You need those classrooms before those teachers show up” to teach smaller classes, Dunshee said.
“This is not the Democrats’ solution; this is not the Republican solution. This is the right solution,” said MacEwen in a joint press conference at the Capitol.
Under the proposal, which key Senate members said they had not yet seen or studied, grants would be given to districts to build classrooms for all-day kindergarten and for class-size improvements in grades K-3 " with no local match of funds required.
-- BRAD SHANNON School funding overhaul proposed-- Arizona Daily Star Arizona: August 18, 2013 [ abstract] A state lawmaker wants to create a new funding structure that would eliminate school district override and bond elections.
At the same time, it would equalize funding for traditional and charter schools, and, he hopes, quell conflicts between between education and state officials over how education should be funded.
Sen. Chester Crandell, R-Heber, made the proposal last week to county school superintendents from around the state, saying the state would create a dedicated fund for kindergarten through 12th-grade education.
Under this proposal, school districts would no longer receive funding from property taxes within their boundaries. It would all come from the fund.
Districts would also lose the ability to ask voters to approve bonds and budget overrides, and would not receive other locally allocated money to pay for desegregation and other programs.
Funding sources from the state for school construction, classroom equipment and other needs would be eliminated.
Instead, the state would allocate the money equally to districts and charters, likely giving a lump sum to school officials to use as they please.
There are no final numbers, but Crandell said funding would at least rise to the levels of charter schools, which receive about $6,100 per student.
Crandell said the idea is in the early stages and he is pitching it to education officials around the state to see if this type of funding structure would work.
-- Jamar Younger EXPLAINER: ABBOTT V. BURKE, CHANGING THE RULES FOR FUNDING SCHOOLS-- NJspotlight.com New Jersey: July 23, 2013 [ abstract] A series of state Supreme Court rulings starting in 1985, Abbott v. Burke continues to shape and reshape education -- especially for New Jersey's poorest kids.
Summary
The state Supreme Court's landmark school-equity rulings starting in 1985, referred to in shorthand as "Abbott," as in Abbott district or Abbott school. Actually a series of decisions made over the past 30 years, Abbott remains the centerpiece of how the state funds its urban and suburban schools. Abbott's core principle is to ensure that schools in 31 of the New Jersey's poorest communities receive the "thorough and efficient" system of education guaranteed by the state constitution.
What it means
With a legal history dating back to the early 1970s, the Abbott rulings remain one of the most important set of decisions on school equity in the country and are still a major force in New Jersey. It was Abbott that led to universal preschool in the state's poorest districts, the state's massive school construction and renovation program, and the addition of extra programs and funding for the disadvantaged initiatives in and outside Abbott schools.
Recent decisions
In 2009, the court ruled as part of its Abbott v. Burke deliberations that the state's existing School Funding formula met its constitutional standards under Abbott, and then two years later in 2011, ordered that Gov. Chris Christie and the Legislature had to provide an additional $477 million to Abbott districts to meet the provisions of the funding law.
-- JOHN MOONEY Ohio’s new schools look great but do little to solve inequities-- Vindy.com Ohio: July 20, 2013 [ abstract] Few would dispute the progress made in Ohio over the past 15 years in building or renovating about 1,000 public school buildings at a cost of about $10 billion.
In the Mahoning Valley alone, a majority of school districts have undergone remarkable transformations in their physical plants. In Youngstown, for example, the state chipped in 80 percent of the nearly $200 million cost to completely renew and reinvent district facilities.
Today, the Ohio School Facilities Commission is more than half-way along its path toward reconstruction or renovation projects in all 612 public school districts serving 1.8 million students. That mission evolved in part from the landmark 1997 Ohio Supreme Court DeRolph ruling that declared Ohio’s system of funding public education unconstitutional because it fell woefully short of affording all Ohio children a thorough and efficient education. As it applies to OSFC, some students were taught in Taj Mahal settings; others learned in squalor.
But 16 years later, shiny new brick-and-mortar physical plants have done little to erase the more internal inequities in funding education or the ongoing financial crises local school districts struggle through largely because of the state’s overworn overreliance on local property taxes.
The OSFC-funded new buildings may give the appearance of wholesale progress but in some respects they’re little more than impressive-looking smokescreens for lingering inequalities in School Funding and student performance among urban, suburban and rural school districts.
Disparities remain crystal clear. According to data from the Ohio Department of Education, in 2011, Youngstown City Schools spent an average of $15,408 on each of its 6,057 students compared with the $8,241 spent to educate each of Austintown Local’s 5,149 students.
Disparities in student performance are even more stark. In last year’s state report cards for example, Youngstown schools received a D; Austintown schools received an A+.
-- Staff Writer NC Senate panel backs new Wake school construction bill-- News Observer North Carolina: July 18, 2013 [ abstract] New legislation that would make the Wake County Board of Commissioners the only such body in North Carolina to take over school construction from the local school board passed a state Senate committee Thursday.
The Senate Rules Committee converted a bill originally approved by the House dealing with School Funding into legislation giving Wake commissioners school construction authority. The vote comes as a different bill affecting nine counties, including Wake, has stalled in the House.
“The bill got hung up in the House, so we decided to take the other counties out and make it more simple,” said Sen. Neal Hunt, a Raleigh Republican.
Hunt said he’s confident that a Wake-only bill will be passed by the House.
House Bill 726 would more than quadruple the amount of real-estate assets the commissioners control, as well as potentially giving them authority over hundreds of millions in new construction contracts.
Hunt said that the bill would allow the school board to focus on education while the more business-minded commissioners could deal with construction.
-- T. Keung Hui Arizona House passes school bonds bill -- azdailysun.com Arizona: June 10, 2013 [ abstract] Arizona lawmakers have slashed $1 billion from public education dollars in recent years and gone to court to avoid mandatory increases in School Funding. Now they want taxpayers to directly cover the costs of new construction, repairs, equipment and school buses.
The Arizona House of Representatives passed legislation Monday that would allow school boards to increase local property taxes to pay for bonds to cover long-term capital costs. The 31-26 vote on Monday illustrated a division among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over how to fund Arizona schools hit hard by the recession.
Supporters described the measure as a temporary salve until the state comes up with a permanent plan to restore School Funding, while conservative Republicans said it would wound homeowners still recovering from the economic downturn.
"Many families are hurting. This bill says let them eat cake," Republican Rep. John Allen of Scottsdale said.
House Bill 2399 would allow school districts to set bond limits of up to 20 percent of its tax base, up from the current limit of up to 10 percent. The bill was revived recently after months of inaction and came to the floor late Monday with little notice.
Jeremy Calles, chief financial officer of the Kyrene School District in Phoenix, said educators need more money to cover basic repairs, including leaky roofs and broken pipes that emit sewer fumes and distract students.
The bill faces a difficult road to passage because it still needs to move out of the Senate, but lawmakers appear eager to end the legislative session soon. It's also unclear if Republican leaders will support a measure that could potentially increase property taxes by up to $400 million statewide, according to state estimates.
-- Associated Press Editorial: Bill to give commissioners control of school construction bad for Davie County -- Winston Salem Journal North Carolina: March 20, 2013 [ abstract] If history is any indication — and it usually is — then a legislative bill that would give county commissioners control of school properties, including renovation and construction, would not be in the best interest of public education in Davie County.
School administrators and the school board are the experts when it comes to designing and equipping schools to meet the changing educational needs of students — not county commissioners. Giving that responsibility to commissioners could mean more austere cuts to School Funding.
Davie County's school system is already one of the poorest-funded in the state, and last year commissioners attempted to force a $2.2 million budget cut on the school system — 23 percent — before a group of concerned mothers, the DC Moms, fought back and helped stop the cuts. The commissioners also have dragged their feet on the issue of replacing the county's 56-year-old high school. They will be asked by school administrators on April 1 to place a bond referendum on November's ballot to finance a new $53 million high school.
â€"In most jurisdictions, the school board has a lot more experience with construction than the county commissioners,†Leanne Winter, director of governmental relations for the North Carolina School Boards Association, told Journal West's Lisa O'Donnell. â€"There's a huge body of research on the linkage between school design and maintenance to student learning and behavior.â€
Winter said she opposes Senate Bill 236 sponsored by Sens. Pete Brunstetter, R-Forsyth; Neal Hunt, R-Wake; and Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, because it would destroy the checks and balances that currently exist when it comes to the quality of education at the local level.
Brunstetter told the Winston-Salem Journal that the bill would â€"put the financial responsibility and accountability†for school construction and maintenance in one place — the board of county commissioners.
-- Journal Editorial Board Panel OKs spending for proposed Montana school funding bill-- Missoulian Montana: February 12, 2013 [ abstract] A proposed School Funding bill that increases state money for schools and cuts local property taxes got another political boost Tuesday, as a legislative budget panel approved spending that aligns with the proposal.
On mostly bipartisan votes, the Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Education made its recommendations for state public School Funding for the next two years.
Sen. Llew Jones, R-Conrad " the sponsor of Senate Bill 175, the comprehensive School Funding bill " said most of the panel’s votes set spending levels that coordinate with the spending framework of his bill.
Denise Juneau, the Democratic state superintendent of public instruction and a supporter of SB175, said the votes were “a great morning for schools.”
“Throughout this entire (legislative) session, I’ve been telling people it’s been very heartening to hear all the talk about supporting public schools,” she said. “There’s been a lot of bipartisan discussion. … It showed itself today.”
Nonetheless, Juneau said the School Funding proposal still has a “long journey” through the Legislature.
SB175 cleared a Senate committee last week and may be on the Senate floor later this week, Jones said.
Jones’ bill would increase state funding for public schools by about $60 million the next two years, route more funds to school construction, more widely distribute oil-and-gas revenue to help eastern Montana schools deal with impacts from oil-and-gas development, and cut local school property taxes by $19.5 million a year, at a minimum.
Yet while Jones’ bill directs the changes, it doesn’t directly appropriate all of the money.
-- MIKE DENNISON Bill would allow Baltimore to use road taxes for school construction-- Washington Examiner Maryland: February 09, 2013 [ abstract] Legislation that would allow new transit authorities to raise property taxes in Baltimore and the Washington suburbs would allow Charm City to use its earnings to fund schools instead of roads.
Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., D-Prince George's and Calvert counties, is sponsoring a bill to apply a 3 percent sales tax to gas sales, allow counties to raise their own gas tax up to 5 cents per gallon, and create regional transit authorities in Baltimore and the Washington suburbs that could raise property taxes to fund transportation projects.
However, a provision in the bill would allow Baltimore to use some of the money from its property tax increase for school construction. It is the only city or county given this ability under the bill.
Increasing taxes on gasoline "is a tough push for Miller, and he's going to need to find any way he can to get votes for this gas tax bill," said Nick Loffer, grassroots director for the conservative think tank Americans For Prosperity-Maryland.
Seventy-three percent of the state doesn't want this gas tax hike, and he's going to have to try to sweeten the pot to get votes from legislators who are sitting on the fence."
The School Funding would be contingent on the General Assembly approving bond sales for school construction.
Miller's office did not respond to calls or emails for comment.
Baltimore has 160 schools in bad need of repair and renovation. Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Andres Alonso appeared before state legislators from his city last month to lobby for $30 million a year over the next 10 years. That money would back the sale of millions in bonds to fund school construction.
-- Andy Brownfield
Brown contemplates withdrawing from school construction funding
-- SIA Cabinet Report California: January 11, 2013 [ abstract] With one hand, Gov. Jerry Brown gave school facility managers the proposed benefit of $450 million generated by the closing of tax loopholes from the passage of Proposition 39 in November.
But with the other hand, the governor raised the specter of the state leaving altogether its traditional role as a funding partner in school construction projects overall.
Brown’s January budget narrative, released Thursday, ominously references the notion that it might be time for the state to reconsider its long-standing commitment to raising and managing billions of dollars in debt for school facility projects.
“Currently, there is no bond authority remaining in the core school facilities new construction and modernization programs,” Brown’s fiscal staff reported. “As a result, now is an appropriate time to engage in a dialogue on the future of school facilities funding. Central to this discussion must be a consideration of what role, if any, the state should play in the future of facilities funding.”
Brown’s budget writers go on to condition the future participation of the state “in the context of other competing education and non‑education priorities and needs,” and on a desire to give local officials “appropriate control of the school facilities construction process and priorities.”
The disclosure follows discussions that have been taking place for months among members of the State Allocation Board and the Office of Public School Construction about restructuring the enormously complex school facilities funding program " a goal that was intended to mirror the governor’s ambition to restructure the state’s role in School Funding overall, replacing it with a more simplified grant formula.
The proposed policy shift also comes forward as the last few dollars left from prior bond issues for school construction are being distributed among the many needy districts. The last major state bond issue with significant funds targeting school construction was approved by voters in 2006.
Efforts to place a new statewide bond issue on the ballot have fizzled the last three years and once again last month another attempt has been made. Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, introduced legislation that would put a school facility bond measure on the ballot in 2014.
-- Kimberly Beltran City school board OKs 10-year facilities plan-- Baltimore Sun Maryland: January 08, 2013 [ abstract] The Baltimore school board approved Tuesday a sweeping plan that would close or renovate more than 150 schools, with the goal of bringing the oldest school infrastructure in the state up to 21st-century standards in one decade.
The board voted unanimously to approve the $2.4 billion plan, introduced by city schools CEO Andrés Alonso in November. The vote came on the eve of the 2013 legislative session, and a day after Gov. Martin O'Malley said he would devote $336 million to school construction this year.
The system's 10-year plan will rely heavily on persuading lawmakers to approve a measure that would allow the system to borrow more than $1 billion, and pay it back by securing at least $32 million in funding from the state over several years in the form of a block grant.
The district, with the support of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and advocates, plans to use the 10-year plan to lobby lawmakers for the block grant commitment this session. The city's delegation has identified School Funding as its top priority.
"We haven't made history yet, but we will," Jimmy Stuart, co-chair of the Baltimore Education Coalition, said of the board's approval. The coalition will hold a rally in support of the plan in Annapolis in February.
In response to a question Monday, O'Malley said he was open to the idea and looked forward to learning more about the proposal.
School officials in Baltimore County, which has a larger population and the second-oldest infrastructure in the state, are considering a similar plan. Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said Tuesday that education funding will be his top priority in the Assembly session and that he'll seek $123 million for school renovation and construction projects.
The city's plan would close 26 buildings, shut down or merge 29 programs, and renovate or rebuild 136 facilities. All of the actions will require annual school board approval.
The first schools affected will close at the end of this school year: Baltimore Rising Star Academy, Garrison Middle, Patapsco Elementary/Middle and William C. March Middle.
Northwestern High School, which is recommended for closure in 2015-2016, is the only high school on the list. Alumni and community leaders said they also plan to take their fight to Annapolis.
"We plan to protest and question the decisions about several schools and about the whole process," said the Rev. C.D. Witherspoon.
The district built the plan from a $1 million study it commissioned, known as the Jacobs Report, that detailed the infrastructure needs of every school building in the city. The report also identified where the system's buildings were grossly underused.
-- Erica L. Green Expert slams state for financing shortfalls-- My San Antonio Texas: November 05, 2012 [ abstract] The state of Texas is not doing its job to help school districts finance new buildings, an expert witness testified Monday in an ongoing School Funding trial.
“A lot of the growth of new construction has been shifted to local taxpayers to an inordinate degree,” Dan Casey of Moak Casey & Associates told Judge John Dietz. “I think it results in some disparities.”
Casey also maintained that some fast-growth school districts are reaching capacity for issuing debt and some are having to use operating funds to pay off debt because of a limit on borrowing called the 50-cent rule, which is enforced by the Texas attorney general.
That rule also is prompting school districts to finance debt for longer terms, which ends up costing more, Casey said. Thirty-five districts now levy more 40 cents of their tax rate for debt and are nearing capacity, he said.
Assistant Attorney General Bill Deane questioned whether Casey had any firsthand knowledge of the alleged shortcoming in facilities funding. He also showed that almost half the school district debt will be retired within 10 years and inquired how much of the bond debt had been issue for non-instructional facilities, such as stadiums.
Responding to a follow-up question from school district lawyer David Thompson, Casey pointed out the infamous $60 million stadium in Allen ISD was built without any state assistance.
-- Gary Scharrer Commissioners battle over school funding, facilities study -- Carrol County Times Maryland: October 13, 2012 [ abstract]
The decision to close a school should not be driving the board of commissioners’ decision whether to minimally fund the school system, according to the president of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners.
The Carroll County Board of Education is performing a Comprehensive Facility Utilization Study at the urging of the board of commissioners to find cost savings within the school system. There is a strong feeling on the school board that if it doesn’t close a school, it will be funded by the board of commissioners at Maintenance of Effort, according to Commissioner Doug Howard, R-District 5. Maintenance of Effort is a law requiring counties to provide schools with funding per pupil no less than the prior year.
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The board of commissioners had a spur-of-the-moment 90-minute discussion at the very end of its Thursday afternoon meeting. The heated discussion left commissioners hurling accusations at one another and making their case to close or keep schools open. The battle was primarily between Howard, who does not support closing schools, and Commissioner Richard Rothschild, R-District 4, who supports closing schools.
Howard, the board’s liaison to the school board, argued that the facilities study and how much the board of commissioners chooses to fund the school system’s operating and capital budgets should be completely different discussions. The school board should not be feeling pressured to pick a school to close because they are worried about the county giving them less money, Howard said.
The discussions on taking cost-saving actions and making decisions about the schools operating budget should not be divorced from one another, according to Commissioner Dave Roush, R-District 3.
“There’s a cost associated with every seat whether it’s full or empty,” Roush said. “To the extent that there are an excessive number of empty seats means their costs are being wasted and we’re being asked to fund them.
“I think we have a right to be concerned about the efficiency and effectiveness of the way the money we give them is being spent.”
There is confusion on the school board, Howard said, over what the goal is for the board of commissioners regarding cost-saving measures for the school system. Howard expressed concern that the board of commissioners is sending the wrong message, since it remains split on whether schools should be closed.
-- Christian Alexandersen Arizona school funding gap grows between ‘have’, ‘have-not’ districts-- Tucson Citizen Arizona: March 03, 2012 [ abstract] The cracks in the school walls are still spreading. The fire alarms sound too often or don’t sound at all. Mechanics struggle to keep old school buses running one more year. Budget managers try to figure out where the money will come from to fix leaky roofs, wheezing air-conditioners and broken vents.
Across Arizona, school districts struggle to find the funds to fix and maintain their buildings, in large part because state lawmakers over the past decade have countered laws and legal rulings meant to help all public-school facilities meet or exceed a basic standard.
-- Bob Ortega New York state owes poor schools $5.5 billion: advocates-- WTAQ New York: February 15, 2012 [ abstract] Education advocates on Wednesday pushed New York State to increase funding for schools in impoverished areas in the budget for the new fiscal year, saying those schools are owed $5.5 billion under a 2007 court ruling.
The Education Law Center, which absorbed the advocate group that had won the historic School Funding lawsuit, did not specify how much extra funding it is seeking in the budget for poor school districts for the budget for fiscal 2013, which starts April 1.
New York's top court in 2007 had ruled that the state had failed to provide students in poor areas with the constitutionally required "sound, basic education."
New York had started to fulfill the court ruling by agreeing to a four-year increase in aid for students in so-called high needs areas. Spending rose more than $1 billion in 2007 and 2008, according to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the group that had won the lawsuit. There was no funding increase in 2009, however.
The state's tax revenue sank during the economic downturn, and education funding was cut by $2.7 billion in 2010. Children in poor school districts bore the brunt of those cuts, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity said.
"We're asking the legislature to revise the Executive's budget by allocating increased funds to the Foundation program to put the State back on track towards constitutional compliance," David Sciarra, executive director, of the Education Law Center, said in a statement.
-- Joan Gralla In Montgomery, dozens testify against cut in school construction funding-- Washington Post District of Columbia: February 10, 2012 [ abstract] Dozens of Montgomery County parents, school officials and municipal officials testified this week against a proposed cut in school construction funding by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D).
The Montgomery County Council held public hearings Tuesday and Thursday for the county’s upcoming six-year capital spending plan, which dictates how construction funding is allocated among schools, roads and other infrastructure projects.
Last month, Leggett proposed the first cut in School Funding in recent memory, despite record-high enrollment growth and what school officials describe as low construction costs.
Of the proposed $4.21 billion in capital funding, Leggett proposed $1.36 billion for schools, a 0.3 percent decrease from the previous capital plan. The Board of Education had requested $1.49 billion, or a nearly 10 percent increase.
Leggett is proposing seven school additions and the construction of two new elementary schools and a new middle school. But he is, among other things, delaying the modernization of most middle schools and all high schools.
School officials have made guarded public comments about Leggett’s proposal. Board of Education President Shirley Brandman (At Large) has said she understood the “difficult balancing act” the county is in. Nonetheless, in prepared remarks Thursday, she urged the County Council, the body that ultimately approves construction funding, to support the school board’s proposal.
Parents stood up and waved multicolored signs several times Thursday to support additional School Funding. Several families from Poolesville " home of one of the highest-ranking public high schools in the nation " wore matching Poolesville Elementary School T-shirts.
“We have the No. 1 school academically in Maryland, and 64th in the nation, in a tired, deteriorating building,” said Jerry Klobukowski, a town commissioner for Poolesville.
-- Victor Zapana DC Council chairman wants charter schools facilities allowance at least $3,000 per student-- Washinton Post District of Columbia: February 09, 2012 [ abstract] D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown is urging Mayor Vincent Gray to keep funding for public charter school facilities at least $3,000 per student.
Brown tells The Washington Post that charter schools need more stability and certainty in their finances (http://wapo.st/xaUXWS ). Public charter schools use the facilities allowance to cover rent, mortgage, debt service and renovations.
In the 2010 fiscal year, former Mayor Adrian Fenty cut the allowance from just more than $3,100 per student to $2,800. Federal funding has helped keep it at $3,000.
Charter School Funding has been the focus of mayoral commission, which recently recommended that the allowance remain at $3,000 but said that further study is needed.
-- Associated Press School Closures Are Coming to a District Near You-- Yahoo News National: February 08, 2012 [ abstract] When I grew up, "school closure" usually meant something related to the weather, like a snow day. Now there's a different kind of storm threatening whether or not your school stays open.
As I drove home Monday, I listened to National Public Radio, where Elizabeth Fiedler reported the story "Pennsylvania School District Goes Broke." It was a heart-rending story of the Chester Upland School District, a poor area south of Philadelphia on the verge of bankruptcy. It was sad, but it was still someone else's problem in a state far away.
The next morning in my small Georgia town, I was immediately greeted by a panic-stricken colleague, who begged me for the contact information and application of the private school where my wife teaches and my daughter attends. It didn't take too long to figure out why: A local public school that once served as the model institution is facing a similar predicament.
And it doesn't just stop at our local school. According to the LaGrange Daily News, the county faces an $11.1 million budget deficit. It plans to lay off more than 50 art and music teachers, slashing its budget and closing the venerated West Side Magnet School.
Though Georgia and Pennsylvania are far apart, the story of the two districts is strikingly similar. Both have tapped out federal stimulus funds. Both have had state grants significantly cut, though the reasons are somewhat different. In Pennsylvania, a charter school sued to get the funds that would normally go to the district. In Georgia, the arrival of the Kia Automotive plant led state legislators to increase the value of the county in its rating system for School Funding, and thereby reduce the state money once allocated for needy counties.
-- Professor John A. Tures, LaGrange College Marion school official outlines how upgrades have lowered energy costs-- Marion Star Ohio: January 25, 2012 [ abstract] As the public continues to scrutinize School Funding, Marion City Schools told a group of business leaders this week that it is watching its dollars.
Assistant Superintendent Roger George outlined ways the district is saving on utility costs during the district's monthly business leaders luncheon at the administration center. He attributed much of the savings to new and renovated school buildings that were a result of a $97 million Ohio School Facilities Commission project completed in 2004.
He also spoke of more recent upgrades that improve monitoring of energy costs.
"We are doing our best to save some nickels and dimes," Superintendent James Barney said.
Marion City Schools partnered with the OSFC in 2001 to reduce the number of buildings from 15 to nine. OSFC money and revenue generated by a bond issue and 1999 tax levy funded the project.
George said the district spent about $1.43 million on utility costs during the 2004-05 school year. By the 2008-09 school year, the expense had dropped to about $1.36 million, and during the 2010-11 school year was about $1.1 million.
"We keep working every year to do a little better," he said.
New schools have allowed for more automation of utilities and more opportunities for energy efficiency.
-- Kurt Moore Christie Pledges School Aid Battle -- Wall Street Journal New Jersey: January 09, 2012 [ abstract] Gov. Chris Christie plans a new challenge to a court-ordered state education funding formula that has provided billions of dollars in extra funding to poverty-stricken schools within the so-called Abbott districts.
While he didn't discuss specifics of how he would continue the fight, Mr. Christie said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he would nominate two state Supreme Court judges this spring who won't "grossly" overstep their powers—as he argues the court has by ordering more School Funding.
"Eventually, the court is going to admit it was wrong or I'm going to be able to change the court so that the new members are not as tethered to the Abbott decision," Mr. Christie said during a 45-minute interview with the Journal ahead of his State of the State speech Tuesday. "They will be able to admit on behalf of their predecessors that they were wrong."
Mr. Christie was referring to a 3-2 decision in May by the state Supreme Court that the governor's cuts to education funding were unconstitutional. The court ordered him to send about $500 million more to 31 of New Jersey's poorest and most underfunded school districts.
The Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Christie's budget violated the state constitution by shortchanging the School Funding plan adopted by the Legislature in 2008 and affirmed by the court in 2009. The case, Abbott v. Burke—a legal challenge filed more than three decades ago—has led to the state pouring billions of additional dollars into some of its poorest districts over the years.
David Sciarra of the Education Law Center, the Newark-based advocacy group that brought the lawsuit against the state, said the court has already upheld the school spending plan, and Mr. Christie's energies would be better directed toward providing "adequate and equitable funding" to all New Jersey public schools.
"We need to move past this kind of discussion about the courts. That's over," he said.
Still, Mr. Christie stands to have new power to shape future decisions made by the state's highest court. Mr. Christie could nominate two new Republicans to the court in March to fill seats held by Democrats, potentially tipping the traditionally liberal-leaning court toward a GOP-majority.
-- HEATHER HADDON Study Tallies a District's Return on Investment-- Education Week Virginia: December 06, 2011 [ abstract] For capital spending, the report estimates that every dollar the district spends results in $1.55 in total regional spending. Every $1 million of capital spending, such as for school modernization or construction, is associated with about 13 jobs, by Mr. Walden's calculations. Not content with making an argument that good schools have an economic value that is unmeasurable, the district asked a university economist to calculate just what it brings both to the city and the Hampton Roads region in southeastern Virginia.
As the city and the school district head into budget season, Mr. Merrill said he wanted to make an argument for School Funding based on business principles."I'm growing weary of that public sentiment that we're a drainer of public resources," Mr. Merrill said. "Yes, we use public resources, but look at what we get in return. You really need to couch funding for schools in terms of investment and return."
-- Christina A. Samuels U.S. Education Chief Pushes Jobs Bill: School Facility Improvements Emphasized
-- Newsleader Virginia: October 15, 2011 [ abstract] President Barack Obama's education chief visited a successful but crumbling inner-city Richmond high school Friday to pitch an imperiled jobs-creation plan that would provide a cash infusion for school improvements and teacher retention.
Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones said the School Funding in the jobs bill would help the city make some upgrades that otherwise would be unaffordable.
-- Associated Press More districts join school funding lawsuit-- MySanAntonio.com Texas: September 28, 2011 [ abstract] School districts will throw everything short of the kitchen sink into their upcoming lawsuit against the state of Texas for shortchanging public education, a lead attorney in the case said Tuesday.
â€"We are going to try to cover the waterfront because the system is so out of whack,†school finance lawyer Randall â€"Buck†Wood said.
The suit, which he expects to file within two weeks, will claim state leaders have created an â€"arbitrary, irrational and inequitable†funding system.
The suit also will claim the state is responsible for the inequitable funding of school facilities, he said, while also alleging a violation of the state's ban against a statewide property tax.
Nearly one-quarter of the state's school districts are already levying the maximum $1.17 tax rate for maintenance and operations, resulting in a statewide property tax, Wood said, which the Texas Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in a school finance case six years ago.
There have been six constitutional challenges to Texas's school finance system to reach the Texas Supreme Court since the landmark Edgewood vs. Kirby decision in 1989, when the court ruled that â€"districts must have substantially equal access to similar revenue per pupil at similar levels of tax effort.â€
Per-student funding in Texas now ranges from less than $5,000 per child in some school districts to more than $10,000 in others, according to the Equity Center, which represents 690 school districts.
â€"We believe litigation is the only way to ensure taxpayer equity and a quality education for Texas children,†said Wayne Pierce, executive director for the Equity Center.
-- Gary Scharrer Wyoming school official: Class sizes not linked to school construction-- Star Tribune Wyoming: September 11, 2011 [ abstract] About one-third of Wyoming school districts plan to seek exemptions from a new law limiting class size in early grades, according to information from the Wyoming School Facilities Department.
Officials from 16 districts have told the department they plan to seek a formal waiver from a law requiring districts to average no greater than 16 students per class in kindergarten through third grade. Lawmakers added the provision during a session bent on reforming education in Wyoming. The state funds one elementary school teacher for every 16 students, so lawmakers said the money is already available for districts to spend in the classroom.
School districts that don’t comply with the law are subject to funding penalties in 2012-13. Districts can request a waiver for three reasons: “Insufficient school facility capacity, positive school performance, positive student achievement or for other reasons related to the delivery of the education program to students.” While most school districts meet the requirement or will this year, several said they lack the available funding for more teachers and space in their schools.
Hearing complaints from constituents, state legislators on the Select Committee on School Facilities Committee questioned facilities department director Ian Catellier on Thursday about how class size is factored into school building needs.
His answer: It doesn’t.
School capacity is determined by student population and square footage. Lawmakers said old guidelines considered the number of students per classroom and supported including class size and other recommendations from the state School Funding model during facilities planning.
-- JACKIE BORCHARDT Arizona School Funding Formula for Building and Maintenance Debated-- Arizona Republic Arizona: May 23, 2011 [ abstract] Arizona has been failing its schools for decades when it comes to providing money for building and maintaining campuses, education-funding advocates say. Despite nearly 20 years of lawsuits that forced the state to provide more-equitable funding for poorer school districts, the gap between "have" and "have not" districts is growing again. Meanwhile, by some measures, as most states spend more to improve school facilities, Arizona consistently spends less.
And it shows, says one of the state's most dogged gadflies. As Tim Hogan, director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, talks with school leaders across Arizona about filing a new lawsuit against the state, he says the Legislature and other leaders need to find a fair way to fund and maintain schools, many of which have no money to properly repair their older buildings. "This is doable," he insists. Twenty years ago, Hogan represented the Roosevelt School District in a suit charging that relying on property taxes to build and maintain schools unconstitutionally shortchanged students in poor districts. Arizona's Supreme Court agreed, forcing an overhaul of how Arizona paid for school buildings and sparking a slew of school-funding lawsuits from Massachusetts to Wyoming. Some of those states have had success creating fairer school-finance systems. And since Arizona's chronically underfunded overhaul isn't working, some critics say the state should look to those models.
-- Bob Ortega KW pool, NC turf repairs continue despite dispute
-- Star-Tribune Wyoming: May 23, 2011 [ abstract] Wyoming's School Funding inequities have been remedied with several supreme court decisions, and Natrona County school officials hope their latest disagreement with the state can be resolved without a lawsuit.
The school district's board of trustees voted unanimously Monday night to enter into an "reservation of rights and tolling" agreement with the state School Facilities Commission. The agreement allows the district to repair the swimming pool at Kelly Walsh and the artificial turf at Natrona County high schools during the summer without penalty while pursuing an "informal review" of its request to use major maintenance funding for the projects.
The commission pays for maintenance of educational facilities but does not pay for upkeep of features such as swimming pools and bleachers, called enhancements. The commission allows districts to spend up to 10 percent of their major maintenance allocations toward enhancement repairs, provided more immediate needs are met.
The district requested use of regular major maintenance for the projects -- both considered enhancements by past commission decisions. District officials cited educational purposes for each. Commission staff members denied the request.
Natrona County received about $3 million for major maintenance last year and about $4 million has been allocated for 2011-12. The swimming pool will be paid from 2010-11 enhancement maintenance money, while the turf will be paid for by two years' allocations, said Mark Antrim, associate superintendent of facilities and technology.
This is the first time the district has challenged a state facilities decision, Antrim said.
-- JACKIE BORCHARDT Balt. Co. schools deserve more support
-- Baltimore Sun Maryland: April 18, 2011 [ abstract] As reported in The Sun ("Balt. Co. budget is nearly flat, draws down reserve money," April 15), Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said his number one priority is not to raise taxes. On the Baltimore County government website, his budget summary states, "No increase in Baltimore County's property tax rate — 23rd year in a row, or income tax rate — 19th year in a row." We cannot receive decent services at those funding levels any more than we should expect to live well now on incomes of 19-to-23 years ago.
Mr. Kamenetz has chosen the same path as former County Executives Jim Smith and Dutch Ruppersberger, i.e. the politically expedient one, instead of providing services and public school facilities at the level we deserve and can afford in this county.
This budget explains why our school infrastructure is the second oldest in the state, with less than half having adequate climate control in both hot and cold months. If three schools a year received air conditioning, it would take over 25 years to get them all done — by then, all the public schools in Howard County will have had air conditioning for 50 years.
This budget is why the overcrowding nightmare in county schools will drag on for years, with thousands of hours spent by agonized parents fighting with Baltimore County Public Schools over School Funding that should have been provided long ago.
-- Laurie Taylor-Mitchell N.J. school construction chief defends decision against Trenton Central High School funding
-- NJ.com New Jersey: March 31, 2011 [ abstract] The head of the N.J. Schools Development Authority on Wednesday defended the process in which funds to repair the crumbling Trenton Central High School were eliminated.
The hearing of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Public Schools held at Trenton Central High School sought not only to answer questions about how repairs at TCHS would be handled but also to shed light on the process that selected 10 school construction projects for funding last month from among 51 that had been given the green light in 2008.
Among those rejected was a $150 million project to renovate or replace the aging Trenton Central High School building on Chambers Street.
Marc Larkins, CEO of the SDA, couldn’t say when the SDA would be able to fully fund a project to bring a new high school to the city, he did say the agency would strive to move forward on a package of badly needed repairs for the building.
“What we intend to do is to try and address some of the emergent conditions,” he said. “I was here two weeks ago, we walked the school and I promised that we would have our staff work with the officials to make sure that we address some of the emergent conditions that have been identified.”
During the tour of the building two weeks ago, Larkins was shown some of the problems that students are forced to deal with every day, including leaking and collapsed roofs, warped floors, and an asbestos condition that has forced the school’s auditorium to be closed for the last two weeks.
Larkins said a team from SDA would be at the high school tomorrow to perform another walk-through. He also said staff members were working on a project to repair the building’s roof.
District officials are lobbying SDA for a total of $24 million worth of repairs to TCHS.
After the meeting, Trenton Superintendent Raymond Broach said he hoped SDA would be able to address some of the school’s needs.
“I understand something’s going to be done,” he said. “They are hearing our voice in terms of the emergent repairs, as everybody is calling it.”
Larkins could not confirm a timetable for moving forward on the repairs or how much of the bill SDA would be able to foot.
-- Matt Fair LETTER: Better planning needed on school buildings-- The Leaf Chronicle Tennessee: February 25, 2011 [ abstract] Regarding the Feb. 20 Leaf-Chronicle story on School Funding: Money has always been a government downfall. The government has no pockets of its own so it reaches into ours: They cry and grab it, we feel it and cry. So, this way they are assured of being funded even though we have not had a raise in eons; we can live off the leftover change.
Then what is the problem about how and where to spend the booty? Crowded classrooms have been with us from the beginning when there were the "overcrowded" one-room schoolhouses; what a jumble to be teaching so many subjects at one time to that assortment of grade levels.
-- MODRIS STRAUSS School Board Wants County To Be Bad Guy-- Rhino Times North Carolina: January 27, 2011 [ abstract] The fight continues over who will take the political fallout for halting Guilford County Schools' $457 million construction program – if the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, as some of the commissioners have suggested, votes to freeze funding for schools not already being built.
The Board of Commissioners was expected to take up the issue at its Tuesday, Jan. 25 retreat, but when snow was predicted it postponed the retreat until Monday, Jan. 31. The Board of Commissioners had asked the Guilford County Board of Education to come up with a list of the projects that would be frozen, but the school board, at its own retreat on Saturday, Jan. 22, couldn't agree on an answer to the commissioners.
The Board of Commissioners has proposed halting the school construction projects for which construction has not begun to avoid adding to the county's debt load and to avoid an increase in the property tax rate for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.
The school board and the commissioners, as often happens, are playing "chicken" over the issue – in this case to determine who will be blamed by voters who live near the school projects that would be frozen for halting construction. The angriest of those voters will be in Jamestown, where a long-delayed reconstruction of Ragsdale High School would probably be postponed, and in southeast
Guilford County, where residents are in a fight with the school board over where to site a new southeast area elementary school.
There's no question who would win the funding fight. The Board of Commissioners has complete statutory authority over all School Funding, including the funding of construction projects. If the commissioners decide not to issue bonds to fund a school construction project, or not to release money from bonds already sold to fund a project, the school doesn't get built or renovated.
School board member Nancy Routh acknowledged the commissioners' authority.
"The thing we don't have control over is approving that funding source or allocating the money," Routh said. "We're dependent on them to do it."
-- Paul C. Clark School Replacement, Repairs Riding on Central Kitsap's Levy Measure
-- Kitsap Sun Washington: January 15, 2011 [ abstract] When Central Kitsap voters receive their ballots next week, they’ll be given a long list of school projects to consider when they decide whether to support a school building and maintenance levy.
Ballots will be mailed Wednesday for the Feb. 8 special election.
If approved, the district would collect $58 million over five years. In addition, the district expects to qualify for $31 million in state and federal funds, bringing the total to $89 million in projects.
The estimated levy rate would be $1.71 per $1,000 of a home’s value, which could increase to $1.85 per $1,000 in 2016.
Projects are planned for 19 of the district’s 21 schools, including the rebuilding of one, renovation of another and a new building for transportation and food services.
Other projects include $7.3 million to replace computers in classrooms districtwide, upgrade servers and software and install a fiber optic Internet network. Repairs and maintenance would be undertaken at 17 other schools and Silverdale Stadium.
PAST REQUESTS
Twice in the past decade, voters rejected the district’s request for funding.
In 2003, a $60 million bond was requested to replace Jackson Park, Fairview Junior High, Central Kitsap Junior High and Seabeck Elementary.
In 2005, Central Kitsap voters turned down a $17 million levy request " projects expected to bring an additional $40 million in matching funds " to replace both Jackson Park and Seabeck and upgrade 21 schools.
More than 50 percent of voters approved each measure, but at the time, a 60 percent “supermajority” was required to pass School Funding. The district now needs just over 50 percent to pass the levy.
The repairs district officials says are needed have changed.
Enrollment declined, and budget pressures forced the district close Seabeck and Tracyton elementaries. Facilities at Tracyton are currently being rented, and the district plans to open portions of Seabeck for renting as well. Assessed value for both are a combined $9.5 million
“Enrollment is cyclic. We’re trying to stay out in front,” said Superintendent Greg Lynch.
It’s impossible to know exactly how many children will begin school in coming years, but first grade and kindergarten enrollment are up this year, and estimates suggest that enrollment could rise again, Lynch said. With that in mind, district officials say the buildings the district has will likely be needed.
During the past nine years, the district has made $61 million in repairs, funded by federal impact and state funds as well as grants and other non-tax revenue.
But not everything got fixed, and most of the schools are older than 30 years.
“We let these things go and as a result ... they are breaking faster,” said David McVicker, CKSD’s executive director of business and operations.
The backlog of repairs grew to $119 million, district officials said.
The district prioritized repairs based on maintenance and technology requirements, cost, survey rankings from the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and other needs.
-- Angela Dice Report recommends taxes, partnerships to fund city school facilities-- Baltimore Sun Maryland: December 15, 2010 [ abstract] The American Civil Liberties Union presented a financial plan Wednesday to fund $2.8 billion in upgrades of dilapidated Baltimore school buildings that suggests imposing local taxes, partnering with an investor and increasing government funding.
The funding proposal follows an ACLU report released in June that found that 70 percent of city schools were in urgent need of upgrades. For years, Baltimore students have attended schools with nonfunctioning heating and air conditioning, broken windows and limited electrical systems, the June report said.
The follow-up report released Wednesday, compiled by the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute, likened the crisis of the city schools to that of a natural disaster and asked that city and state leaders respond as such. The work would need to take place rapidly over 10 years, the report said, rather than the 50 years it would take under the current city School Funding structure.
The Tax Policy Institute explored how the city could establish new revenue streams through a 1 percent local sales tax increase and a 1 percent tax on meals and beverages in Baltimore, both of which would require legislative approval.
The proposed sales tax increase is the largest source of suggested revenue, and a conservative estimate shows it would generate about $67 million in 2012. The meals tax, the report said, could generate about $11 million a year. Numerous jurisdictions around the country have tapped these revenue streams for school construction costs, the report said.
Bebe Verdery, education reform director for the ACLU of Maryland, said that while some will quibble with the proposed tax increases, the report is an effort to present the feasibility of a large-scale makeover of school buildings in a reasonable amount of time. The report suggests that construction could begin in 2013 and be completed by 2022.
"It's clear that what we need is the political will to implement this plan on behalf of the students and teachers of Baltimore City," Verdery said.
Local leaders have recently homed in on the problem, with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and city schools CEO Andrés Alonso announcing last month that a 10-member task force would begin working on how to obtain the $2.8 billion needed to respond to the ACLU's initial findings.
Alonso said the report "is very much in line with our ambition to provide our kids with the learning settings they deserve now, and not sometime in some unfathomable future."
Ryan O'Doherty, the mayor's spokesman, said the Mayor's Task Force on School Construction will fully examine the institute's recommendations, and that the mayor has committed to some of the suggestions, such as using revenue generated from a city slots facility for property tax relief and school construction as prescribed by state law.
But O'Doherty said the mayor would have to explore ways to mitigate increasing the sales tax in Baltimore when the city is trying to build its tax base and create jobs.
To execute the plan, the report said, the city must develop a partnership with an independent financier that would take on the debt and oversee the projects. It recommends that the partner be a government agency, an independent public authority or a state-chartered nonprofit organization.
The organization would take on what would eventually total $3.4 billion in construction costs after inflation, to be repaid over 30 years — double the life of normal construction bonds. At the end of the repayment period, the facilities and assets would be turned over to the city and school system. State and city governments would need to increase their funding to schools to assist with repayments.
-- Erica L. Green Suit accuses state of unequal school funding-- San Francisco Chronicle California: July 13, 2010 [ abstract] A coalition of grassroots groups and families filed a lawsuit against the state Monday seeking to have California's educational system declared unconstitutional for failing to adequately and equally fund schools.
The suit filed in Alameda Superior Court is the second lawsuit filed this year over what plaintiffs say is a broken public school system - one that leaves too many children with less than a fair shot at a good education.
Plaintiff attorneys say they want the court to require the Legislature and the governor to address unequal and inadequate conditions within the schools, disparate conditions that more often affect low-income and minority students.
"We have to sue. Not only are we losing teachers and seeing class sizes skyrocket, but districts are eliminating librarians, nurses, school psychologists, core courses in art, music, PE (physical education) and electives," said Giselle Quezada of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, a plaintiff in the new case. "Support for our schools needs to be kept at the level required for a high-quality education, and not just during good economic times."
The complaint alleges that the state's funding system violates the legal requirement to not only provide California's schoolchildren with a public education, but to fund schools before anything else. It also alleges the condition of schools violates the Constitution's equal protection clauses, citing disparities across the state in things like teacher quality, class sizes and facilities.
In May, nine school districts, including San Francisco, filed a similar suit challenging how the state pays for its schools and questioning whether California provides enough money to educate all children equally. Both cases will be argued in Alameda County.
-- Jill Tucker Illinois Suburban School Districts Invest in Wind Farm to Save $2 Million a Year -- Daily Herald Illinois: July 08, 2010 [ abstract] What do you get when you cross a School Funding crisis with a clean-energy initiative? Officials with three suburban school districts hope the answer lies in a downstate wind farm that could save them $2 million in a year in electric bills. And we think they are on to something.
It's natural for tension to accompany new ideas that have such public impact, but we have been impressed with the way Carpentersville-based Community Unit District 300, Keeneyville Elementary District 20 and Prospect Heights District 23 have brought about their plan to build a 19.5-megawatt wind farm in Stark County, 140 miles southwest of Chicago. The electricity generated will offset energy bills, perhaps leaving money that can fill gaps caused by the state budget mess. Put in perspective, a wind farm that size could provide electricity for about 5,000 homes annually. Three years in the making, the proposal had to be reworked again and again as school officials sought a financial model that would comply with state laws and protect taxpayers from losses.
-- Editorial Board Stanislaus County schools may lose millions more-- The Modesto Bee California: March 31, 2010 [ abstract]
When Gov. Schwarzenegger unveiled his 2010-11 budget proposal, he assured it "protects education," but a new analysis warns it actually would slice $30.3 million from Stanislaus County School Funding.
The nonprofit California Budget Project, a "liberal-leaning" group that analyzes government fiscal policies, released estimates Tuesday showing how much funding each California school district will lose if the governor gets his way.
"The education communities are acutely aware of the proposals on the table ... but we want to make the public aware," said Jean Ross, the group's executive director. "This report is trying to bring (the proposed budget cuts) home to a school site near you."
* PDF: School Funding cuts analyzed
Modesto City Schools, for instance, expects to cut $25 million from next year's budget. That's nearly 10 percent. Hundreds of layoff notices have been sent out, class sizes will rise and programming is at risk.
But the California Budget Project estimates the district will need to slash $5 million more from its high schools and $4.5 million from its elementary schools.
The projections for additional cuts are equally frightening for other districts in Stanislaus County: $4.1 million in Turlock, $3.3 million in Ceres, $2.3 million in the Sylvan district and $1.6 million in Oakdale.
California's fiscal woes have caused chaos for every public agency because the prolonged recession has reduced income, sales, property and business taxes collected by government.
In presenting his proposed budget in January, Schwarzenegger had to find ways to close a $19.9 billion funding gap.
"My budget proposal protects education," Schwarzenegger said at the time. The governor's Web site still contends his "2010-11 budget maintains funding for education at the same level year over year."
The California Budget Project doesn't see it that way. It calculated Schwarzenegger's plan would reduce school district and county office of education apportionments and cost-of-living adjustments by 4.1 percent, or an average of $308 per student.
"We seriously question what this means for schools' ability to provide a quality education for all California children," Ross said.
California's public schools serve 6.3 million students in 1,043 school districts.
Stanislaus County's schools are being hit particularly hard by budget problems because most of them have declining enrollment. Because schools are funded based on the number of students, fewer students means less money.
Donald Gatti, Stanislaus County's top school finance official, said Tuesday he was not sure the California Budget Project's analysis is correct. He said the estimate that Stanislaus schools could lose $30.3 million sounded too high.
"I'm guessing they threw everything and the kitchen sink in (to the estimate)," Gatti said. But he agreed the governor's proposed budget "absolutely would reduce School Funding."
This school year, for example, the state reduced per-student funding by $252, which Gatti said was supposed to be restored in next year's budget. The governor, however, proposes repeating that reduction and trimming more funding based on the declining cost of living.
When the state cut 2009-10 School Funding last summer, federal stimulus funds bailed out school districts, enabling most of them to dodge serious budget cuts and layoffs, Gatti explained.
No federal bailout is expected this time, so districts are faced with difficult choices.
Modesto City Schools, for example, is considering layoffs and pay cuts, which are being negotiated with its employee unions. The district has lost more than 3,500 students since 2002. It is deficit spending this year, dipping into reserves to spare programs and avoid teacher layoffs.
Ross said school cuts statewide wouldn't be so drastic if lawmakers would "close recently enacted corporate tax loopholes." She said she is "hopeful there will be a sizable amount of federal money" added to the state budget.
-- J.N. Sbranti Study finds charter schools get less money, how much less varies-- Gotham Schools National: February 24, 2010 [ abstract] Charter schools receive less public funding per student than their district school peers, according to a report released today by the city’s Independent Budget Office.
But the size of that disparity varies widely according to whether the charter school is housed in a city-owned building, the report said.
Charter schools that are housed in public school buildings receive only $300 less per student than district schools, according to the IBO’s calculations.
But charter schools that own their own buildings or lease them receive more than $3,000 less per student in public funding than district schools, the report said. In those schools, charters must pay for maintenance and other building costs themselves. Those costs are covered by the Department of Education for charters in city-owned buildings.
The report, prepared at the request of Panel for Educational Policy member Patrick Sullivan, is an attempt to resolve a long-standing question in the charter school debate.
Charter school advocates argue that, under the state’s funding formula, the schools receive significantly less per student. Critics counter that charter schools, especially those housed in city-owned buildings, receive many hidden subsidies that either equalize or boost charter school resources above what district schools receive.
Both supporters and critics of the city’s charter schools found elements in the report to support their positions.
“The IBO study validates the City’s policy of offering public space to charter schools in an attempt to provide charter school students with the same resources as their peers in other public schools,” Chancellor Joel Klein said in a statement.
Charter schools are not legally guaranteed space in public buildings, but the Bloomberg administration, which strongly supports the schools, has offered space in district schools to many charters.
James Merriman, head of the New York City Charter Center, said the report bolstered charter advocates’ claim that charter schools are slighted by the state’s funding formula. “When you add it up, the gap between district schools and charters isn’t even close, particularly for those charters that do not share public space,” he said.
Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew disputed that interpretation.
“The difference between funding for public schools and charter schools in public buildings is negligible,” Mulgrew said. “When you add in the private funding that many charter schools get, I’m sure that we’ll find that many charter schools have resources that are well beyond those of public schools.”
At the same time, both charter school opponents and advocates also found nits to pick with the report’s analysis, claiming that it either inflated or understated the amount of public funding charter schools receive.
Parent advocate Leonie Haimson said that the IBO’s accounting of district schools’ per-pupil spending includes DOE central administrative expenses that are spent on things like data systems and consultants.
“A lot of it is being spent by DOE on highly questionable priorities that don’t really benefit students,” Haimson said. “How much do we actually see at the school level? That’s the disparity we are talking about.”
By contrast, the Charter School Center released a statement arguing that many charter schools in fact receive far less money at the school level than district schools serving the same neighborhood. “[B]ecause the City has rightly directed more resources to district schools in high needs neighborhoods, the gap for charter schools in those same neighborhoods is much wider,” the statement said.
Because of the complicated ways charter schools and district schools are funded, a fair comparison of how much money district and charter schools actually spend on students is difficult to draw cleanly.
The IBO accounting of district schools’ per-student spending did include most central administrative costs, and the amount of money actually doled out to schools varies significantly from school to school depending on what students are enrolled at the school. Charter schools receive a flat per-student amount of public funding, but most of their administrative costs also come out of that fund. In the case of schools housed in city-owned buildings, some maintenance costs are then covered by the city.
The report did not examine the amount that charter schools raise through private philanthropy each year. According to an analysis by Kim Gittleson, a research assistant employed by one of GothamSchools’ funders, Ken Hirsh, charter schools in the city spent on average $14,456 per student. That number is greater than the amount of public support charter schools receive but still less than the amount of citywide per-pupil spending for district schools.
Questions of how charter schools are funded, and the effect of the city’s practice of granting public building space to charters, are currently under heavy public scrutiny. Charter advocates are currently lobbying legislators to lift a freeze on charter School Funding that keeps spending capped at 2008-09 levels. And a rancorous debate over the city’s charter school siting practices has been cited as one of the biggest political obstacles to raising the statewide cap on charter schools.
In his statement, Klein linked those two issues, indicating that the city’s siting practices for charters are likely to remain unchanged.
“Until the state’s funding formula is revised and charter schools are eligible for capital dollars like other schools, we will continue to work with communities and parents across the City to find space for new charters when it is available and presents the right fit with other schools in a building,” he said.
-- Maura Walz Washington Schools looking for savings-- Washington-Times Herald Washington: December 18, 2009 [ abstract] The state will be cutting School Funding soon, but Washington schools are already looking for ways to help make them minimal.
Superintendent Bruce Hatton told the Washington School Board on Thursday that the schools and the board will have to look at tightening its belt. He briefed them on two programs that might get funds in local schools.
The first program the schools have qualified for is the state’s Qualified School Construction Bonds program. The program, funded by stimulus dollars, gives low-interest loans to schools for capital improvement projects.
“These allocations were highly competitive and we were fortunate to receive them,” Hatton said.
Washington schools have qualified for $1.85 million in the loans. Hatton said the money, when finalized early in 2010, will be used to fix roofs at North and Lena Dunn elementary schools, update heating and air conditioning at North and Griffith and retrofit lighting at all four elementaries.
The board voted 6-0 to give Hatton permission to speak with school attorneys and Indianapolis-based firm Ice-Miller to finish the loan process. Hatton said when finished, the projects will start immediately and construction could begin by the summer.
Keyword Search: ARRA, stimulus, bond
-- Staff Writer Indiana voters rejecting school bond issues-- Evansville Courier & Press Indiana: November 15, 2009 [ abstract] Earlier this month, Indiana voters decided that school administrators are going to have to feel some of the pain caused by a lagging economy.
Statewide, there were nine ballot initiatives dealing with requests for higher taxes to increase School Funding. Four were approved. Five were not.
Gov. Mitch Daniels was among the first to point to a common message he said taxpayers are sending. He said results from Nov. 3 and Tuesday's elections were "very interesting."
It was the second consecutive year voters cast critical eyes on school-funding referendums.
Last year, in the first year of a new state law that requires taxpayer approval of such spending requests, 11 were voted down and only five approved, including a $149 million construction bond issue sought by the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. The EVSC's proposal was supported by about 70 percent of voters. The bond issue will fund the new North High School and an adjacent middle school, along with many other renovations and additions at local public schools.
-- Eric Bradner Iowa school funding faces $543 million challenge-- Quad-City Times Iowa: November 03, 2009 [ abstract] Gov. Chet Culver and legislative budget architects will face a $543 million gap in funding for K-12 public schools when they begin assembling a fiscal 2011 spending plan next session.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency indicates the school aid funding commitment for next school year will call for a built-in increase of $542.7 million that includes "backfill" for the $202.5 million in one-time federal stimulus money and for the $238.5 million lost with Culver's 10 percent across-the-board spending reduction for the current fiscal year.
-- Rod Boshart Budget ax may fall on school-- Courier Press Indiana: October 24, 2009 [ abstract] All three public school districts in Posey County are losing state funding, and in Mount Vernon, an elementary school could close as a result.
Under Indiana's most recent School Funding formula, the dollar follows the student. And in Posey County's small, shrinking school districts, some consequences will be noticeable.
Mount Vernon Superintendent Keith Spurgeon said his school district is spiraling down a financial path that it cannot sustain without major changes.
-- John Martin The Case for Consolidation-- Bangor Daily News Maine: June 06, 2009 [ abstract] Repealing the state’s school district consolidation law is not a solution to the problems that plague the controversial reorganization law or the financial constraints that schools will continue to face.
The reality is that Maine cannot afford the sprawling education system it has. Recognizing this, lawmakers two years ago voted in favor of reducing Maine’s 290 school districts to 80. As expected, the process was difficult and some districts will need more time to complete consolidation.
So far, however, reorganization plans have been approved for 26 regional school units statewide. Another 41 alternative plans have been approved, mostly large school districts, like Bangor, that didn’t have to consolidate with other communities. These approved plans cover 84 percent of all stu-dents in the state.
At the same time, however, 22 plans were rejected by voters earlier this year, leaving many communities in limbo. While this is not a good outcome, stopping consolidation is not a solution because the problem of Maine spending too much on school administration remains. This will be exacerbated by a drop in School Funding in 2011, when the state stops receiving federal stimulus funds.
So, it is a disservice to both districts that have consolidated and those that have not for lawmakers to repeal the reorganization law, a path they appear to be taking. The Senate on Thursday voted 19-16 to repeal the consolidation law. A day earlier, the House was two votes short of repeal, a margin it is likely to make up when the measure is reconsidered early next week.
A common sentiment among senators was that the state has not fulfilled its obligation to fund 55 percent of K-12 education as required by a 2004 referendum. A recent analysis by the Maine Heritage Policy Center, no friend of the Baldacci administration, found that when factoring in teacher re-tirement benefits " which cost the state nearly $200 million this year " the state exceeds 55 percent of K-12 funding. “Taxpayers should be fully aware of the truly enormous sums of money being spent by Maine’s schools,” wrote the report’s author, Stephen Bowen " a former teacher.
Further, the same law that called for 55 percent state funding set spending caps for all levels of government. According to the most recent analysis by the State Planning Office, the state and the majority of municipalities and counties were under their limits, but 82 percent of school units exceeded their caps by a total of $132 million, money borne by taxpayers. The percentage of school units exceeding the caps has increased each year since LD 1 went into effect.
Since the 2004-05 biennium, state funding to school districts has increased by about $800 million. Total state funding to local school districts will have increased by 37 percent from 2006 to 2009. The consumer price index is projected to rise by 11 percent during that period.
-- Staff Writer School facilities need help-- Aiken Standard South Carolina: June 04, 2009 [ abstract] Who would live in a house with inoperative toilets, leaking ceilings, sagging floors and walls embedded with toxic materials? Well, many kids in Aiken County attend public schools amid such decay. Almost 50 percent of their buildings are 50 years old and a reputable study recently concluded it would cost $358 million to bring them up to standard. That's $7,100 per household; a staggering sum years in the making, years of doing more with less, and years of allegiance to the mistaken impression that cutting "waste" was the answer to School Funding.
While this bill is beyond our means, we must do something! The last county bond referendum passed in 1978. We need to demand another one now to build a school system fit to serve a new age.
We need some new facilities and must retire others. The little school around the corner may not be part of the solution. Some schools may have to be consolidated. As regrettable as these changes might be, the greater good must rule the day. Parents who object need to pony up the money to keep their pet school operating.
We must fund repairs that protect health and welfare in facilities we plan to retain, and need to look at empty "big boxes" to see if they can be economic and effective replacements for obsolete schools.
We need to innovate and school-centered community development may be a possibility. Denver taxpayers saved $2.5 million by colocating a high school and a K-8 comprehensive school around a student union housing a gym, cafeteria, computer center, labs and administrative offices. Campus green space hosted outdoor sports. The "union" and the surrounding "park" also served as a city recreation center. Differing usage patterns limited conflict. The city staffed the center and taught PE, freeing four teaching positions that were dedicated to academics. A private Boys and Girls Club provided after-school activities and day care.
Focused schools could be a partial answer. Each high school could major in one academic area, develop optimum teaching capabilities and use the Internet to pipe live interactive instruction into classrooms throughout the county. Why have six foreign language departments when one might do a better job?
-- JON SAMUELS Bill could provide more funding for Enterprise schools
-- The Enterprise Ledger Alabama: May 15, 2009 [ abstract] The Enterprise school system and other Alabama school systems could receive more than $105 million to repair schools damaged in natural disasters such as the March 1, 2007, tornado.
The funding for schools damaged in natural disasters was included in an amendment successfully sponsored by U.S. Rep. Bobby Bright, R-Montgomery, for a federal School Funding measure.
Bright successfully amended the proposed 21st Century Green High- Performing Public School Facilities Act to include the funds for schools damaged in natural disasters.
The bill also provides local school districts with resources to make their facilities more environmentally and energy efficient. Bright’s amendment to include the natural disaster provisions passed by a unanimous 433-0 vote, and the overall bill passed by a 275- 155 margin.
Enterprise Mayor Kenneth Boswell and City School Superintendent Jim Reese expressed appreciation for Bright’s efforts on the legislation.
“We are currently $9 million short in finishing the auxiliary facilities at Enterprise High School, but the funding in this legislation would help us reach our goal of finishing the school destroyed by the March 2007 tornado,” Boswell said.
School officials are “very appreciative,” Reese said. “Enterprise schools are still dealing with the after effects of a tornado that destroyed our schools and left eight children dead.
Though we have received funding from various sources, we are still short of what we need.” Under the bill, local school districts would apply for grants.
Alabama is expected to receive more than $105 million from the measure. The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.
-- Staff Writer Treasury Implements Infrastructure, School Bond Programs -- Forbes/Reuters National: April 03, 2009 [ abstract] The Treasury Department announced the implementation of the Build America Bond program, which through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will provide low interest bonds to state and local governments for infrastructure projects. Under the program, Treasury will issue taxable bond payments to state and local governments in an amount equal to 35 percent of the interest payment on those bonds. Under this formula, state and local governments will have lower net borrowing costs than if the bonds were traditional tax-exempt or tax credit bonds.
The Treasury also announced the issuance of two tax credit bond programs for schools, known as Qualified School Construction Bonds and Qualified Zone Academy Bonds. The programs will issue state and local governments a tax-credit equal to 100 percent of the interest payments on the bonds, essentially providing interest-free financing for school construction and other eligible spending projects for public schools. Guidance issued by Treasury and the IRS today provides that the $11 bln authorized for the construction bonds in 2009 be divided among the states and 100 largest school districts based on levels of Federal School Funding. The $1.4 bln allocated to the academy bonds will be divided among the states based on poverty levels.
-- Tessa Moran Caballero honored for school funding bill vetoed by governor-- The Salinas Californian California: February 26, 2009 [ abstract] California school districts and county boards of education honored Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, this week for her work on a measure last year that sought to help school districts raise funds for new school buildings.
The Coalition for Adequate School Housing, which advocates for school infrastructure, presented Caballero with an award at their annual Sacramento convention recognizing her outstanding authorship of AB 2173.
“This bill was about fairly sharing the costs of building new public schools,” said Caballero. “New housing offers great benefits for communities, but it also places a huge burden on school districts that have to serve the children and families in the areas being developed. This bill simply updated the law to reflect the growing cost of school construction.”
AB 2173 aimed to change rules governing the fees that cities can impose on developers to help pay for new school facilities.
Building costs have soared during the 10 years since the law governing these fees was written. Fees that districts are currently allowed to charge fall far short of what is needed to cover the costs of new school facilities.
Current law links the fees to fixed, per-student grants that school districts receive from the state for school construction. Caballero’s measure linked the fees to the actual costs of construction. School districts would have still been required to try to raise money from local bond measures before cities could adopt developer fees for school facilities.
The measure was vetoed by the Governor, after he vetoed hundreds of bills during the budget impasse.
-- Staff Writer State may cut school funding-- Asheville Citizen-Times North Carolina: February 26, 2009 [ abstract] North Carolina school districts learned Wednesday they will lose about $42 million in state funding for building and renovation, money that comes mostly from sales of lottery tickets.
The new strategy for dealing with a budget shortfall could wipe out the extra share of lottery proceeds that Western North Carolina legislators fought to secure last year for local schools, a mountain lawmaker said.
The Department of Public Instruction will withhold three months worth of construction funding that comes from lottery sales and corporate income tax collections, said J.B. Buxton, deputy superintendent of public instruction.
What is less clear is how the transfer came about. The department characterized it as a budget-cutting move ordered by the governor's office, but Perdue's spokeswoman said the governor hasn't ordered any new budget cuts beyond an additional 2 percent in cuts for most agencies announced Wednesday.
The state budget shortfall for the year ending in June is expected to top $2 billion as the ailing economy sends tax collections plummeting. In January alone, state officials found out this week that state revenues were down $286 million, or 14 percent, from a year before.
While some government agencies have had to absorb significant cuts, Perdue has asked public schools to trim only 2 percent of their operations budgets, or just more than $150 million.
For Buncombe County Schools, at least, the loss of construction funds instead of more cuts in operations is what passes for good news these days.
â€"If we have to lose money, we're better off losing it in the capital account than we are in the general fund,†Superintendent Cliff Dodson said.
-- Jordan Schrader Stimulus to bring $1.7 million to area schools-- Fort Morgan Times Colorado: February 23, 2009 [ abstract] Morgan County school districts could see as much as $1.7 million from the federal stimulus package.
Estimates show the Fort Morgan School District could receive $681,000 extra for its Individuals With Disabilities Education Act funding and an extra $387,000 for Title I funding, said Ben Marter, communications director for U.S. Congresswoman Betsy Markey, D-Fort Collins, both of whom came to Fort Morgan for a visit Friday morning.
It is estimated the Brush School District could receive an extra $302,000 for IDEA and $118,000 for Title I; Wiggins School District could receive an extra $119,000 for IDEA and $82,000 for Title I; and Weldon Valley School District could receive an extra $26,000 for IDEA and $8,000 for Title I, he said.
In addition, Colorado will receive money for school construction, which will create construction jobs and build needed infrastructure, Markey said.
Although some have criticized putting more federal funding into education, it is important to invest in schools, she said.
Not only will School Funding create construction jobs, many superintendents have told Markey they were looking at the possibility of laying off employees, she said.
The extra money means they won’t have to cut their staff, which saves jobs, Markey said.
Also, the money is going to areas which were unfunded mandates for schools, she said. Legislation requiring schools to serve those with disabilities rarely came with much money to do the job, Markey said, but this new funding will at least give them more to work with.
Some Colorado schools were built during the Depression and need work to keep them open, particularly those which have been damaged by weather such as blizzards, she said.
Keyword Search Tags: Stimulus, arra
-- Dan Barker Thatcher School Board learns about funding options-- Eastern Arizona Courier Arizona: February 23, 2009 [ abstract] Although Arizona is in a state budget crisis that resulted in reduced School Funding, the Thatcher School District has financial options it can pursue to ensure students receive quality educations.
John Snyder of RBC Capital Markets talked to the Thatcher School Board on Feb. 12 about those financial options. The board made no decisions after Snyder’s presentation.
“None of what I tell you can help next school year,” Snyder said, explaining the school district must first schedule a budget override or bond election in November. If a bond issue or budget override gains voter approval, the resulting infusion of money will not happen until the following fiscal year.
This means if the school district schedules a budget override or bond election for November 2009, the school district’s students will not see benefits until July 2010.
In 2008, the Thatcher School District applied for state funding through the Arizona School Facilities Board to pay for four new elementary classrooms. The School Facilities Board, which administers the state’s Students First program, decided Thatcher qualifies for eight classrooms.
Soon there was a roadblock " the School Facilities Board was no longer authorized to pay for new schools or classrooms because of the state’s budget deficit.
-- Diane Saunders Arkansas School Buildings Program Not Getting Money to Districts Quickly Enough -- Education Week Arkansas: November 19, 2008 [ abstract] A half-billion dollar program to build and repair school buildings around the state isn't getting money to districts quickly enough, a pair of lawmakers complained to the man running the program. Rep. Eddie Hawkins said he's heard a "great deal of discontent" from several school superintendents in his district about the pace of distributing $455 million in money for school facilities that the Legislature set aside last year. "Never before have I seen an agency function that is handing out millions and millions of dollars, which should be a happy moment for a board member or school superintendent, and yet you're writing checks and there is so much discontent," said Hawkins, D-Vilonia. "I'm just very alarmed about where we are with this program."
Hawkins and Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, complained about the pace of the facilities money being distributed as lawmakers reviewed the program's budget for the upcoming year. The agency reported that it had spent $107 million for school facilities last year. Lawmakers last year set aside nearly half of the state's surplus for the facilities program in an effort to end the long-running Lake View School Funding case. Doug Eaton, director of the Division of Public School Facilities and Transportation, said his agency is following the rules that were laid out in 2003 legislation establishing the program.
-- Staff Writer/Associated Press, Justices block bid to change Abbott funding
-- Star-Ledger New Jersey: November 19, 2008 [ abstract] The state Supreme Court yesterday rejected Gov. Jon Corzine's request to end the long-running Abbott vs. Burke School Funding case, a lawsuit that has forced a succession of governors to steer billions of dollars in special aid to Newark, Camden and 29 other needy districts.
The court ordered a series of hearings in which Corzine will have to prove to a "special master" that his new formula for distributing $7.8 billion in state school aid eliminates the need for special treatment of the so-called Abbott districts.
The hearings will be overseen by Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne, the assignment judge in Bergen County.
"Until the State demonstrates to our satisfaction that a constitutionally adequate education can be provided to Abbott district students through the funding that will be provided (under the new formula) ... the State is bound to comply with the prior remedial orders and decisions respecting the plaintiffs in Abbott districts," the court said in its 5-0 opinion.
In its ruling, the court also said the Abbott districts can seek additional funding this school year if they feel the money is needed to provide adequate schooling. This year the districts are to collect $4.1 billion in state aid.
Corzine's reform, which the Legislature approved in January and was included in the state budget in July, essentially linked state aid to the number of poor children in any given district. It put the Abbott districts on the same footing as dozens of other towns struggling under less-than-adequate state aid.
Yesterday's ruling was a setback for the governor, who had hoped to wrest control of the Abbott district funding levels from the court as he grapples with a budget shortfall expected to reach $5 billion next year.
But it was cheered by advocates for the Abbott districts, who argued that the new funding formula, the School Funding Reform Act, was going to shortchange the poorest students and undermine progress made in recent years.
-- DUNSTAN McNICHOL AND JOHN MOONEY Champaign County sales tax: New approach to school funding
-- Urbana/Champaign News-Gazette Illinois: October 26, 2008 [ abstract] Randy Johnson doesn't live in Champaign County – he's in Vermilion – but he's hoping the proposed 1 percent sales tax for Champaign County school facilities passes Nov. 4.
He does most of his shopping in Champaign, so he knows he'll pay more at the cash register, but Johnson – the representative for Carpenters Local No. 44 in Champaign – thinks the new tax will help boost the economy by generating local jobs in the trades and help local education.
"I know people are going to look at it as 'Oh, here we go, another tax,'" he said. "If this is a good way to help education with our kids, then it's a plus for all of us."
But University of Illinois student Sean Mills sees several minuses. He sees a tax designed to hit him – and other UI students – in the wallet.
Mills, co-chairman of the Student Senate's governmental affairs committee, said a new tax couldn't come at a worse time. He said many students are paying more for tuition, books and rent already this semester.
He's not against giving money to schools but feels the tax unfairly targets those who don't own homes, both in terms of promised abatements and in terms of what's taxed.
"The tax itself is completely unfair to students," he said.
Many of his fellow students agreed. The majority of the UI Student Senate voted against the tax.
Following are some questions and answers about the proposed tax.
1) Who's getting more money? Who's spending more?
If the majority of voters approve that 1 percent sales tax, Champaign County residents will pay that much more in tax on clothes, household goods, appliances, gas, eating out and most other retail expenses.
To counter that, those owning property in most of the county's school districts may also see a decrease in their property taxes if the sales tax passes. School officials are promising to pay off building bond debt – now paid with property taxes – with some of the sales tax money they'll receive if the tax is approved.
So will you end up paying more taxes or less taxes?
-- Amy F. Reiter Ohio Educators: Economy Makes Levies a Tough Sell -- Toledo Free Press/Associated Press Ohio: October 23, 2008 [ abstract] Ohio educators accustomed to the difficulty of passing School Funding issues say economic turmoil during this election is making levies and bond issues an even tougher sell than usual. Voters in about one-third of the state’s school districts will decide 266 school levies, bond issues and tax changes on Nov. 4, with some of them paired as the same ballot issue, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office. Failure means cuts in personnel, student services and extracurricular activities for some districts, while others stand to lose tens of millions of dollars in matching funds for construction and renovation projects. The list includes districts of all sizes, from the cities of Toledo and Dayton to a smattering of villages across the state.
With rallies, pamphlets and phone calls, supporters are pleading to a tough crowd of voters who in many cases are facing financial challenges of their own. “We realize there are tough economic times throughout the state, but we encourage voters to support their local levies and look at them as an investment in the future of their community and the future of Ohio as a whole,” said Scott Blake, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education. In the past decade, Ohio voters have passed 1,277 of 2,166 school issues on November ballots, or about 59 percent.
-- Staff Writer Voters Consider Meals Tax to Fund School Construction -- Washington Post Virginia: October 13, 2008 [ abstract] In what is probably the region's most significant test this fall of public sentiment on taxes and School Funding in the worsening economy, Loudoun voters will decide Nov. 4 whether to endorse a meals tax to raise money for school construction. Will residents of one of the area's wealthiest counties be willing to support new taxes for schools as property values dwindle and retirement funds shrink? The question comes as schools across the region are feeling pinched by dwindling local and state revenue. The measure would grant county supervisors the power to tax meals in restaurants and prepared meals at grocery stores up to 4 percent. If passed, it would raise up to $13 million annually and shrink the $176 million budget gap county officials expect next year.
"We have an awful lot of folks who do not live in this county" who eat in Loudoun restaurants, said Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott K. York (I). "They would be leaving that tax behind to help pay for school construction." For instance, officials said, meals purchased at Dulles International Airport would be subject to the tax. Supervisors voted in July to put the measure on the ballot.
-- Michael Birnbaum Part III - School Facilities - Gubernatorial and Legislative Action - Conditions in Poor Districts-- The Star-Ledger New Jersey: September 02, 2008 [ abstract] Because the Abbott cases cover a long period of time, it seems worthwhile to remember the numerous governors who have faced the school facilities problem and whose actions have played a role in its history. Florio 1990 - 1993; Whitman 1994 - 2000; DeFrancesco 2001; McGreevey 2002 - 2003; Codey 2004 - 2005; and Corzine 2006 - 2008.
In the 1990s, Governors Florio and Whitman faced Supreme Court decisions requiring action. Both developed, presented and passed new School Funding legislation that ignored the Court's rulings. In May 1999, in the sixth year of her administration, Whitman finally delivered draft legislation on facilities construction to the Legislature. In May and June, legislative leaders considered Whitman's plan and postponed action until the Fall. In the Fall, the Legislature postponed actiion until after the Novermber (mid-term) election. Republican Senator Gormley took on the task of rewriting the proposed legislation.
In 2000, Speaker Collins challenged the Supreme Court's order for 100 percent funding in Abbott districts. His suit failed. The Senate and Assembly presented revised and competing facilities legislation. The major conflicts were in the amount of aid that will be provided for non-
Abbott districts and the requirement that these districts use a State Authority to build their facilities.
-- Judith C. Cambria $1 billion later, school funding to level out -- Powell Tribune Wyoming: September 01, 2008 [ abstract] An attentive crowd listens as Sen. John Barrasso speaks during the dedication of the new Powell High School last month. Barrasso spoke of the importance of education and praised the Wyoming Legislature for providing funding for improving school facilities in the state.
Tribune photo by Toby Bonner
Now that two new schools have been completed in Powell, what is next for school construction in the community?
While two more new schools are projected for Powell, the timetable for building them is uncertain, because the school construction program in Wyoming is evolving.
Currently, a new Westside Elementary is being designed, but construction hasn’t been funded yet. Todd Wilder, the Big Horn Basin project manager for the Wyoming School Facilities Commission, said he can’t be sure when it will be funded by the Legislature.
“It depends on priorities,” Wilder said.
Those priorities may change this winter as the commission re-evaluates all the schools in the state.
After the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that the state was responsible for providing equitable facilities to all Wyoming school children, the Wyoming Legislature intiated an assessment of all the school facilities in the state. In that study, conducted in 2001, schools were to be evaluated on their condition, capacity and educational suitability.
However, no criteria for educational suitability were available for the study, so the schools were rated mostly on their condition and their capacity. A number of schools were identified in need of immediate attention due to structural problems, safety factors, overcrowding or, in some cases, exceeding the capacity needed for the student body. Powell High School was one of the schools put on the priority list.
-- Don Amend New Jersey Set to Build 50 Schools at $2.9B Tab -- Daily Record New Jersey: July 09, 2008 [ abstract] State officials approved plans to build more than 50 schools with the $2.9 billion lawmakers appropriated for the 31 districts covered by the Abbott vs. Burke School Funding lawsuit. The approval comes three weeks after the Legislature agreed to borrow billions for school construction and a day before Gov. Jon S. Corzine intends to sign that measure. "It's nice to be here standing before everyone talking about how we're going to spend money, rather than how we're going to curtail money," Scott Wiener, chief executive officer of the Schools Development Authority.
The funding legislation also allocates $1 billion to partially fund projects in non-Abbott districts. State Department of Education officials are still drafting the procedure, but Commissioner Lucille Davy said districts will have to apply for grants before asking taxpayers to approve their local-funded share.
The state procedure to dole out the money will not be a repeat of the first round, in which suburban districts who got referenda passed first got state funding -- spending $2.6 billion in state funds without considering which projects were most needed. "We're not going to do the first-come, first-served $1 billion send-out," said Davy, adding that grants will be approved on criteria similar to that used for the Abbott projects.
-- Gregory J. Volpe County considers delay in school construction funds-- Commercial Appeal Tennessee: May 31, 2008 [ abstract] Memphis City Schools could take a double hit in School Funding next year.
Just as the Memphis City Council has considered pulling $93.5 million from the urban school system's operating budget, some county commissioners want to postpone a $60 million appropriation for city and Shelby County school construction.
A proposal introduced Friday by County Commissioner Mike Ritz asks the county to hold off giving the $60 million until after July 2009, possibly delaying the construction of three new schools -- one in the city and two in the county.
Ritz's resolution, which will be discussed Wednesday during the county's next budget committee meeting, calls for postponing or dropping almost $150 million in construction projects planned for the next three years, including three road expansions. Of that, $120 million would have been designated for schools.
"We've got some serious budget problems coming and the best way for us to prepare is to slow down our capital spending in the next few years," Ritz said.
Yet both school districts say cutting capital funds next year would make it difficult to complete pending projects.
-- Alex Doniach Colorado Charter Schools Likely to Get More for Renovation, Construction -- The Gazette Colorado: April 01, 2008 [ abstract] The annual battle over charter School Funding began anew with the release of a report by the Colorado League of Charter Schools saying that students in those institutions receive less funding than kids in traditional public schools. Charter school opponents countered that those schools can take advantage of more grant funding than other schools but often don't. Still, they conceded that charters are likely to get twice their usual funding for facility renovations and construction this year. The report said charter schools spend $480 out of the $6,369 they receive in per-pupil funding on operating expenses for facilities because, unlike traditional public schools, they must buy or fix up buildings not owned by the school districts where they operate. With operational costs subtracted, their per-pupil funding falls below the state minimum, the report said.
-- Staff Writer California Schools to Raise Auditorium Rental Rates -- San Mateo County Times California: March 25, 2008 [ abstract] The play may no longer be the thing for some budding thespians, due to the higher rates local school districts are charging to use their theaters. Faced with state budget cuts and other financial troubles, districts are raising the rates in order to fully recoup the costs associated with renting facilities to organizations. Recent cutbacks and slashed School Funding are fueling the decision to increase rents, school officials said. "A year and a half ago, we cut $3 million out of our budget," said Liz McManus, the high school district's associate superintendent for business. "There is not any more room to cut." "Every school district is scrambling to search for revenue," said school board president Michael Barber. "Any space we have, we are always looking for ways to leverage that, so we can get more revenue."
-- Mark Abramson Do Facilities Improve Learning?
-- Chillicothe Gazette/Associated Press Ohio: June 18, 2007 [ abstract] Court rulings against the state’s School Funding system led Ohio to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to replace or repair schools. The connection to better grades is not so clear. Despite 10 years of construction spending, the state has no way to measure the impact on grades of one of the country’s biggest school-construction projects. “We’ll be happy to join in if someone comes up with that magic tool,” said Mike Shoemaker, the newly appointed head of the state’s School Facilities Commission. “But I don’t know who’s going to invent the tool.” Report cards improved for most school districts benefiting from $2.7 billion in construction projects since the Ohio Supreme Court first found the funding system unconstitutional in 1997. Yet one in three districts had the same academic rating last year they had six years earlier, an analysis by The Associated Press found. Meanwhile, all districts made academic progress during the same time period, as lawmakers poured billions of additional non-construction dollars into schools and beefed up the way students are taught and tested.
-- Andrew Welsh-Huggins Idaho School Districts Sue Justices -- Spokesman Review Idaho: June 13, 2007 [ abstract] A group of school districts took the unprecedented step of suing Idaho’s Supreme Court justices in federal court for ruling in favor of the districts in a School Funding lawsuit but not providing any fix.
The justices ruled in December 2005 that Idaho’s system for funding school construction is unconstitutional because it leaves poor school districts unable to provide safe schoolhouses for children to attend. Idaho relies almost entirely on property taxes to fund school construction. Local voters must vote by a two-thirds supermajority to raise their own taxes to build a school. The justices, in their ruling, called on the Legislature to change the system and even gave examples of ways to fix the problem, including lowering the two-thirds supermajority, funding school buildings from the state’s general fund budget and tapping corporate income tax revenue.
-- Betsy Z. Russell Baltimore to Audit School Repairs -- Baltimore Sun Maryland: June 07, 2007 [ abstract] Mayor Sheila Dixon ordered an audit of the Baltimore school system's construction and renovation program, responding to reports that the system permitted shoddy work on multiple projects. Saying she "will not tolerate the misuse or waste of School Funding," Dixon called on the city comptroller and the city inspector general to identify the projects that were left incomplete and who was responsible for the problems.
The Sun reported that state inspectors found Baltimore school employees falsely certified that they had made promised repairs. The inspectors also found problems with renovations that were performed, including new windows cut to the wrong size, leaving gaps at the top, and new doors installed in rusty old frames although new frames were paid for.
-- Sara Neufeld Arkansas School Facilities Bill Hits $456 Million-- Times Record Arkansas: March 07, 2007 [ abstract] A legislative committee unanimously endorsed a study calling for the Legislature to devote $456 million " just more than half of a projected $843 million surplus " to renovate dilapidated school facilities. The money would be the state’s share of an estimated $1.4 billion in school renovation projects that could easily still be under construction in 2011. The Academic Facilities Oversight Committee, a joint committee with House and Senate members, accepted the recommendation without dissent, despite being informed that there are probably not enough contractors in the state to fill all the orders in the next two years. However, the state’s budget surpluses could end this year and the money should be dedicated to facilities while the state has money, lawmakers said.
Part of the state Supreme Court’s mandate in a 2002 decision declaring the state’s public School Funding system unconstitutional was to eliminate wide disparities across the state in School Funding and facilities. The long-running Lake View School Funding case is still before the high court and the overhauling school buildings and equipment is by far the biggest issue left unresolved, according to a brief filed jointly by attorneys in the case. The state is addressing the facilities issue by having school districts across the state turn in master building plans to address needs. The state has also adopted standards that must be met by school districts.
-- Doug Thompson School Funding Comes up Short in San Diego; Bonds Covered Only Half of Plans-- San Diego Union-Tribune California: February 28, 2007 [ abstract] About four years ago, Nichols Elementary School in Oceanside cost about $10 million to build. Today, Foussat Elementary, an identical campus under construction in the same city, is expected to cost $15.2 million. The comparison gives a sobering picture of the dwindling value of bond dollars in Southern California, said Brian Sullivan, associate superintendent of school services. â€"If there was ever a clear indication of inflation, it's right there,†Sullivan said. Six and a half years ago, voters approved an impressive $125 million bond measure to update, expand and build Oceanside schools. But that money is nearly gone, and about half of the projects promised in 2000 remain unrealized.
Oceanside Unified School District officials are once again wondering how they'll pay for repairs and construction. Asking voters to support another bond measure is one option, Sullivan said. To help school officials manage bond money and plan for school construction, district trustees voted last night to hire the firm, KNN Public Finance, for the next five years.
-- Bruce Lieberman Lawmaker proposes eliminating property tax as school funding -- Rock Island Argu Illinois: February 20, 2007 [ abstract] Illinois lawmakers soon could be forced into an ultimate decision on School Funding.
State Reps. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, and Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, are proposing a constitutional amendment that would abolish the use of property taxes to fund schools, making the state the primary money provider.
If the measure is approved by voters in 2008, the Illinois legislature would have three years to find a replacement for property-tax revenue, which funds about 56 percent of school expenses.
Rep. Lang said the goal is to force legislators to take action on School Funding and property-tax relief, which has been talked about for decades but never resolved.
"I do not feel the General Assembly will act if not forced," he said. "A constitutional amendment would be the voter's mandate saying you must find another way to fund schools, and I assume we'll do it."
Rep. Lang also said he and the other sponsors don't believe it's the right time to propose a specific plan because attacks on individual ideas are responsible for bogging down the issue in the past.
It would force the legislature into a crisis situation to get the issue dealt with, not played politics with, and everybody regardless of party would be forced to resolve it, Rep. Bost said.
Rep. Lisa Dugan, D- Bradley, is a co-sponsor of the measure.
"There's never been anything solid enough to make the state step forward on this, and I think this particular action puts the state on notice," she said. "Now there would be a timeline -- it wouldn't be just two decades of talk."
State Senate Majority Leader Debbie Halvorson believes property taxes are not the way to fund education, but said in order to be responsible a new funding source must be found first.
Other lawmakers are open to the idea, but also are wary of not having a solution first.
"The plan is no plan," said Rep. Frank Mautino, D- Spring Valley.
"In Michigan, they abolished property taxes, replacing them with an increase in sales tax, and they ended up going a year without funding for schools," he said. "I would much rather see a plan that shows how we're going to pay for it."
State Rep. Patrick Verschoore, D- Milan, said it's a great idea -- especially for the Quad-Cities area, where many people are unhappy with their property taxes -- but a new funding source needs to be found first.
State Sen. Mike Jacobs, D- East Moline, who favors a "tax swap" that would reduce property taxes but increase income taxes to fund schools, said he thought it was a noble cause, but not realistic.
"I wish him well, and I'm open to solutions; but in reality, it's a little tougher than he's saying it is," Sen. Jacobs said.
State Rep. Careen Gordon thinks Rep. Lang is bringing this up as a "do or die approach" to solve the problem, but doesn't see it as an actual solution.
-- Mitzie Stelte Former Cleveland mayor weighs in on schools takeover
-- The Examiner District of Columbia: February 14, 2007 [ abstract] The former mayor of Cleveland testified Tuesday on behalf of the Ohio city’s schools takeover, but warned the D.C. Council to be wary of pitfalls that can hamper the effectiveness of such an action.
Jane Campbell led Cleveland from 2002 to 2005, four years after the mayor’s office gained control of the city’s schools by the Ohio Legislature in 1997.
Cleveland’s students experienced rising test scores in the early days of the city’s takeover but those improvements later slipped when the state Legislature cut School Funding, Campbell said. She said the mayor’s office does not have budget-setting power, and funds for the schools were later reduced.
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s bill would give line-item control of the District’s public school budget, which is recommended by Superintendent Clifford Janey but is ultimately submitted by the mayor’s office to the council.
“We had a situation where prior to the mayoral takeover, no one took responsibility,” Campbell said. “At one point, we were paying five superintendents " four to go away, one to work.”
-- Courtney Mabeus Arkansas School Funding Back in Session -- The Leader Arkansas: December 06, 2006 [ abstract] Arkansas governor-elect Beebe said the top education issue that must be addressed in the 2007 session is funding to fix crumbling school buildings. Beebe said he anticipates the amount needed for school facilities over the biennium will be higher than the $250 million originally estimated. Sen. Shane Broadway, who has headed legislative efforts to upgrade school buildings, has said the number could be as high as $300 million to $400 million but said the figure won’t be known until late December. Beebe and lawmakers will likely have to use money from the state’s surplus, which is predicted to grow to $843 million by the end of this fiscal year. “The good news with the facilities issue is that the bulk of that is capital and can be funded from the accumulated surplus as opposed to ongoing general revenue,” Beebe said. "Obviously there are going to be ongoing needs annually that will have to be addressed."
-- John Hofheimer Alaska Governor Signs School Funding Bill-- Anchorage Daily News Alaska: May 25, 2006 [ abstract] Alaska public schools will enjoy an infusion of cash next year under a bill that is now law. The measure was among several signed by Governor Frank Murkowski. Originally sponsored as a school construction debt reimbursement bill, the measure grew into a patchwork of proposals from the governor and other lawmakers. It extends an existing program that reimburses up to 70 percent of the debt that municipalities incur when they bond to build, repair or renovate schools. It boosts the base student allocation from $4,919 to $5,380 per student for a total of $96 million in new money. It doles out a one-time appropriation of $35 million, to be divvied up under a formula that is more favorable to rural schools than the current distribution.
-- Associated Press Phillips' plan for schools: Close 7, convert 17-- The Oregonian Oregon: April 05, 2006 [ abstract] Portland Schools Superintendent Vicki Phillips said Tuesday that she wants to close seven schools and convert 17 others to K-8s over three to four years.
Humboldt Elementary in North Portland is the only school that could close this fall under Phillips' plan, which requires board approval.
By 2007, the plan would begin to close Kellogg Middle School and five elementary schools: Clarendon, Hollyrood, Rieke, Rose City Park and an undetermined school in inner-Southeast Portland.
Phillips said her plan will eventually save $4 million a year -- a figure opponents question -- and "at least" $10.9 million in averted building repairs.
But she insisted that the controversial closures are mostly about improving education and creating long-term stability in a district with declining enrollment. Portland is projected to lose an additional 500 students next school year.
Closing seven of the district's 85 schools would spread teachers and other resources among fewer buildings, she said, keeping class sizes "reasonable." It also would allow the district to maintain art or music and physical education instruction during swings in School Funding and more easily put into effect a common "core curriculum."
Phillips hopes the K-8 model will keep more students in neighborhood schools and improve lackluster achievement among sixth- through eighth-graders.
With the changes, most schools below high school would enroll 400 to 600 students, Phillips said, with two to three classes per grade.
"We're not trying to build large, impersonal K-8s or elementaries," she said. "We know in those size schools we can keep class sizes at a reasonable level."
Phillips' proposal is less encompassing than a draft version leaked last month. That plan proposed closing 11 elementary schools and converting 27 schools to K-8s within two years.
Board co-chairman David Wynde said that the new plan shows the draft was "a work in process" and that Phillips "carefully listened to a lot of the feedback we got over the past month."
-- PAIGE PARKER and SCOTT LEARN Estimate to Finish Up New Jersey School Job: Add $13B-- Star-Ledger New Jersey: February 17, 2006 [ abstract] State taxpayers, who have already paid $6 billion for a court-ordered overhaul of public schools in needy communities, would have to spend about $13 billion more to finish the job, state officials say. The Department of Education gave the Legislature its estimate of what it would cost to complete all 313 school construction and renovation projects awaiting work under a state Supreme Court mandate. The department puts the tab at $12.8 billion -- at today's prices. Figuring that the costs of everything from land to labor will keep going up, it projects the total would grow by about 7.5 percent each year the work is delayed, topping $29 billion 10 years from now.
Officials with the education department and the Schools Construction Corporation, the agency set up to manage the building program, warned that the estimates are "very speculative." They said some of the construction plans are being updated, while some might turn out to be unnecessary. But David Sciarra, the attorney who has pressed the long-running Abbott vs. Burke School Funding case before the Supreme Court, said the cost estimates give lawmakers enough information to act on a new source of funds. "The Legislature and governor now have all the information they need to act," said Sciarra. "These needs presented in today's report are urgent, are not going away, and require immediate funding. We must not let our children wait any longer for safe and adequate schools."
-- Dunstan McNichol Idaho Bill Tries to Fill School Funding Gap-- Spokesman-Review Idaho: February 16, 2006 [ abstract] Republican lawmakers proposed earmarking $25 million to $35 million for school construction and creating multimillion-dollar accounts for ongoing maintenance and building. The proposals come after a successful lawsuit by 22 Idaho school districts that argued the state has failed to provide students with safe places to learn. The Idaho Supreme Court agreed, ordering lawmakers in December to do more to pay for school construction. In their ruling, justices scolded lawmakers over past attempts to fix the problem. The justices placed the blame primarily on the state's only method for building schools – local bond levies. Idaho is the only state that provides no direct state support for public school construction while requiring two-thirds majorities to approve local construction bonds.
A competing measure from House Democrats would do more to appease angry school districts, giving $35 million upfront to help repair deteriorating schools and dedicating 5 percent of state sales tax revenues – about $55 million annually – to an ongoing school construction account.
-- Associated Press Record Funding Boost Likely for Schools-- Washington Post District of Columbia: February 05, 2006 [ abstract] The D.C. Council is expected to approve the biggest School Funding increase in city history after months of pressure from more than 1,000 parents, educators and activists galvanized by the decision to pay millions for a new ballpark.
Long rebuffed in their pleas for more money for decrepit public schools, frustrated parents said they were outraged when the mayor and council agreed in 2004 to spend more than $500 million on a baseball stadium, a price tag that since has risen. Over the past year, groups across the city banded together to form a single, powerful lobby focused on forcing city leaders to do for schoolchildren what they agreed to do for Major League Baseball.
-- Lori Montgomery School district's woes point to rising 'tax resistance'-- Star-Ledger New Jersey: January 26, 2006 [ abstract] Highlighting what education officials say is a growing tension between New Jersey's rising school costs and the property taxes that pay for them, a South Jersey school district's failed attempt to raise property taxes to plug a huge budget gap could prompt widespread layoffs.
While the Willingboro school district's financial collapse was caused by management miscues, its plight has caught the attention of lawmakers and school officials who say New Jersey leans too heavily on local property taxpayers to support public schools.
"These kind of things are really exacerbated in the condition we are under with School Funding," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools.
"Property taxpayers are overwhelmed, while state aid has not been increased for five years."
Willingboro school officials Tuesday hoped to sell residents on a $400-per-household property tax hike to cover a $4.7million budget shortfall for the school year that ended last June. The gap, caused by accounting mistakes, cost the former superintendent his job.
Voters, however, rejected the proposal, 3,693 to 1,344.
-- Dunstan McNichol Arkansas Commission Approves $86 Million for School Facilities -- Arkansas News Bureau Arkansas: January 24, 2006 [ abstract] A state commission authorized $86 million in state aid for school districts engaged in building projects. State assistance combined with local support represents about $300 million in school construction, said Doug Eaton, director of the Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation. The three-member commission that oversees the division conditionally approved the $86 million in state funding, as long as the projects represent prudent use of state money. Assessment teams will visit school districts that applied for state aid to ensure the necessity of the building improvements or construction projects, Eaton told the Arkansas Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation Commission. For instance, districts losing enrollment but adding classroom space may not be awarded state help, said Sen. Shane Broadway, chairman of the Legislature's Academic Facilities Oversight Committee. Broadway said the commission's action and its earlier decision to appropriate about $35 million for immediate facilities needs indicate the state's dedication to improving school buildings.
The state Supreme Court, in a December 15 decision declaring public School Funding unconstitutionally inadequate, said state funding for a 10-year, $1.9 billion school facilities overhaul was "grossly underfunded." Broadway argued that the state has been reluctant to spend much on facilities until school districts complete master building plans, due to the division on February 1. Monday's action demonstrates the state's willingness to help pay for school construction and improvement, the senator said.
-- Aaron Sadler Oklahoma Teacher Group Sues Over School Funding-- The Oklahoman Oklahoma: January 12, 2006 [ abstract] Oklahoma's public schools are underfunded by about $1 billion a year and have about $3 billion of infrastructure needs the state should pay for, the Oklahoma Education Association, the state's largest teacher union, charged in a lawsuit filed in Oklahoma County District Court. The plaintiffs argue the Oklahoma Constitution requires the state to provide money to the school districts for capital improvements. The Legislature has "refused, neglected and failed to provide any appropriation to the constitutionally created State Public Common School Building Equalization Fund," the lawsuit states.
-- Chris Schutz School Systems Across Louisiana Bursting at the Seams
-- Times-Picayune Newslog Louisiana: September 21, 2005 [ abstract] Across Louisiana, in every district outside the storm-damaged area, school systems have gotten swarms of students displaced by the Aug. 29 hurricane. With the help of volunteers and a hope that the state and federal governments will eventually reimburse them, they are overspending their budgets and finding resources on their own, many expressing feelings of neglect by state authorities in a time of crisis. The federal Department of Education says about 372,000 students from Louisiana and Mississippi are unable to attend classes at their normal public or private schools because of Katrina. Louisiana's education department, which has assigned an agency liaison to each school district in the state, counted 39,518 student evacuees enrolled in Louisiana public schools. Thousands more evacuees have enrolled in private schools, not counted by the state education department.
"Try to be creative" is the message to school systems from state schools Superintendent Cecil Picard, who is looking for long-term compensation from the federal government while advising local authorities to solve their immediate problems as best they can without state money. Picard is banking on a federal Department of Education request to Congress for $1.9 billion in aid to compensate school districts, up to maximum of $7,500 per evacuee student. The agency has requested additional funds to compensate private schools and colleges. In Louisiana, politics may decide how much the districts get. If the federal money is approved, it will flow to the state, which will have the flexibility to divide the funding between the districts serving evacuee students and the districts severely damaged by the storm. The state Legislature will have to be involved in allocations that involve the state's School Funding formula, likely setting off a regional tug-of- war. So far, communication between the state and the districts has been inadequate, officials in some parishes say.
-- Robert Travis Scott Upkeep Upheaval in Wyoming
-- Star Tribune Wyoming: May 24, 2005 [ abstract] Under the state's new School Funding model set by the Wyoming School Facilities Commission, districts must get their routine and major maintenance funds from a general pool. Funding for routine maintenance -- daily janitorial costs -- is based on square footage and is included in the "block grants" each district spends at its own discretion. "Major" maintenance -- those necessary upkeep fixes such as repairing foundations, reroofing buildings, anything that costs $200,000 or more -- is based on square footage and enrollment. For now, districts with "extras" say they are spreading the maintenance butter a little thinner, but still covering everything. They say the state should remain flexible as it transitions into the new funding models. [Part of a 5-part series on Wyoming's new school facilities system.]
-- Dustin Bleizeffer Michigan School Funding System Blasted
-- Detroit News Michigan: May 09, 2005 [ abstract] Poorer Michigan school districts are not providing the facilities students need, despite high tax rates, while richer districts often exceed the needs of students with low tax rates, according to a study. The study calls on the state to step in and fill the gap by either taking responsibility for school upkeep or offering more financial assistance to struggling districts.
"The unmet need in the Michigan public school system is just less than $9 billion. It can be met with an investment of just under $500 per pupil," said report co-author David Plank of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University. "The scale of the problem is really manageable." Under the current School Funding system, school districts such as Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham can provide safe and modernized school buildings and athletic resources with relatively low school tax rates because property values are so high. In districts like Detroit, Inkster, and Clintondale, however, property values are far lower, leaving the districts to struggle to provide safe learning environments despite higher school tax rates.
-- Joe Menard State Control of Montana School Building Projects Proposed-- Billings Gazette Minnesota: March 31, 2005 [ abstract] Montana would gain centralized control over all local school renovation and construction projects under a proposal being considered by the special legislative committee working to build a new School Funding formula. The upside is that schools would receive money directly from the state for renovation and building projects. The downside is that local schools would have to seek approval from the state for all capital construction and renovation projects. The state would decide how much money, if any, it should spend on each project. If the state denies a project, schools will likely be forced to seek redress in the courts.
While the plan would undoubtedly deliver more construction dollars to schools, education lobbyists say the money has too many strings attached. The centralized plan would dictate all construction details down to the local level. For example, the state would tell local districts how many bathrooms and how many auditorium seats their schools will contain, and what the square-footage of the teacher's lounge will be.
-- Allison Farrell Arkansas Senate OKs ‘Historic’ Facilities Bills
-- Times Record Arkansas: March 18, 2005 [ abstract] Four bills that would redefine how public schools are built in Arkansas passed the Senate almost unanimously, with one dissenting vote on one of the bills. The bills will set up a new division of Academic Facilities and Transportation at the state Department of Education. That division will oversee, approve, and reject building plans for all 254 school districts in Arkansas. The state boards overseeing that department will set standards. Failure by schools to meet those standards could result in state sanctions as harsh as removing the superintendent and consolidation.
One bill will require each district to write up a detailed 10-year master plan on facilities. Those plans, combined and prioritized, will make up the state’s master plan for where an estimated $50 million a year in facilities money will be spent after an initial investment of $150 million over the next two years to handle urgent projects. The state’s master plan will be submitted to regular sessions of the Legislature every two years for approval, and would also require school districts to set aside 9 percent of the money they get from the state under the state’s School Funding formula for building maintenance.
-- Doug Thompson Judge Tosses Suit Over Louisiana School Funding
-- The Times-Picayune Louisiana: December 14, 2004 [ abstract] A lawsuit seeking to have Louisiana amend its formula for funding schools to include money for buildings and other school facilities has been dismissed by State District Judge Duke Welch, who said that there are several rulings handed down over the years that keep judges from telling the Legislature how it should spend state money. One of the them is a 1998 decision by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal that prohibits the judiciary from forcing the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to include buildings in the funding formula for school districts. Suing the state were school systems in Livingston, East Baton Rouge, Lafayette, East Feliciana, Assumption, St. Helena, Tensas, and Union parishes. Attorney Tom Jones, representing the districts, said they will decide later whether to appeal.
-- Associated Press New Jersey Schools Agency Pushes To Be Best in Class-- Engineering News-Record New Jersey: November 08, 2004 [ abstract] NEW JERSEY: It took more than 25 years of litigation before the state of New Jersey agreed to equalize public School Funding in rich and poor communities. Two years after a single state-run school construction agency was formed and funded at $8.6 billion, new facilities gleam in the state’s oldest and densest neighborhoods. But the story is far from over as the New Jersey Schools Construction Corporation copes with unforeseen costs and political uncertainty over dwindling funds for hundreds of facilities yet to be upgraded.
-- Debra K. Rubin and Richard Korman Maryland School Funding Increased-- Washington Post Maryland: May 06, 2004 [ abstract] Maryland's Board of Public Works approved $126 million for new school buildings and renovation in the coming year, $50 million more than the panel granted in January but far less than some school districts say they need.
The school construction total covers 106 projects, including new campuses in almost every school district in the Maryland suburbs of the District of Columbia. Included is money for building science labs in high schools and adding classrooms to comply with a state mandate that all kindergartners attend a full day of school by 2008. An additional $1.6 million will go to improve aging schools.
-- Ylan Q. Mui Ruling Puts $80 Million Back Into Arizona Schools-- The Arizona Republic Arizona: May 06, 2004 [ abstract] A Maricopa County Superior Court judge has upheld a 1998 Arizona constitutional amendment that makes it difficult for legislators to change any law approved by state voters, a ruling that will put about $80 million back into school coffers over the next five years to help pay school utility bills.
In 2000, voters passed Proposition 301, increasing the state sales tax to raise money for education and generating a list of directives about School Funding. One of the directives cuts off a district's ability, after 2009, to levy property taxes to help pay for utilities.
But in 2002, lawmakers capped the amount of money schools could raise through property taxes to pay for utility bills until the 2009 deadline. The school districts sued, claiming the laws that capped the utilities tax illegally changed the intent of Proposition 301, which was to increase, not decrease, School Funding.
-- Pat Kossan School Financing Unfair, Judge Rules-- The Boston Globe Massachusetts: April 27, 2004 [ abstract] Massachusetts is shortchanging children in its poorest school systems and should overhaul the way it finances public schools, a Suffolk Superior Court Judge ruled.
The judge's decision, the latest chapter in the 26-year battle over School Funding in Massachusetts, could reshape classrooms across the state if the Supreme Judicial Court follows the judge's recommended remedies, which include constructing adequate school buildings.
-- Anand Vaishnav Chicago Schools Could Get $2.2 Billion-- Chicago Tribune Illinois: March 24, 2004 [ abstract] Illinois Governor Blagojevich is proposing $2.2 billion for school construction grants over four years, as well as more money for classroom instruction. But aides to the governor made it clear they do not want the school construction program overseen by the State Board of Education and prefer to put it under another state agency to save costs. The governor's top priority this session is his proposal to take over virtually all functions of the independent State Board of Education, raising the prospects that lawmakers might be forced to support the plan or risk losing an increase in School Funding.
-- Diane Rado and Ray Long Wyoming Legislature: Fate of Old Schools Pondered -- Billings Gazette Wyoming: March 02, 2004 [ abstract] A little school in Granger, population 146, is the focus of an emotional question in the School Funding debate: Should facilities that are costly to maintain but still functional be spared the wrecking ball? The Granger school has fewer than 20 students and is remote even by Wyoming standards, situated in a tiny desert town 30 miles west of Green River.
According to Representative Parady, "Two stories tall, built of brick and sporting a gleaming wood floor in its gym, the 50-year-old school deserves to be spared because it is the core of the community - and because its replacement wouldn't be better." Although Wyoming representatives voiced sympathy, they were ultimately unwilling to make large changes to Wyoming's court-ordered school finance system to enable school districts to continue receiving maintenance funds for schools, like Granger's, that are deemed surplus property.
-- Associated Press Paying for schools: lessons from Maryland-- The Sacramento Bee National: December 15, 2003 [ abstract]
The small state of Maryland offers some big lessons on what it takes to overhaul a School Funding machine:
Take your time. Bring in outside experts and listen intently. Never underestimate the force of a personality. Count on compromising at the last minute.
Maryland's categorical mess was akin to that of California, where a tangle of more than 100 special funding streams for schools exists. Over the space of a decade, assorted governors and legislators in Maryland had set up one special pot of money after another, all designated for separate purposes close to their political hearts: Class-size reduction. Grants for new technology. A popular boost in teacher pay. Special dollars for Baltimore city schools. More money exclusively for Prince Georges County...
-- Deb Kollars Farm bureau boss wants to help schools, livestock business-- Chicago Tribune Illinois: December 12, 2003 [ abstract] The Illinois Farm Bureau's new president plans bold action in school financing reform and development of the state's lagging livestock industry.
Nelson, who plans to keep farming while commuting to the farm bureau office in Bloomington, said the group is poised to push a School Funding plan that shifts the burden from property taxes to higher income taxes and broadens the sales tax. Similar ideas have failed in the General Assembly in the past.
Legislators are warming to the idea because many Illinois school districts are struggling on the state's financial watch list and lawmakers know change is needed, he said.
"When you've got your back up against the wall, you're going to look for alternatives," Nelson said.
-- Brandon Loomis |
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