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State legislature passes law that limits growth of basic school funding

Editor
Posted 5/12/16

By Kim Thompson Staff Writer The state legislature has voted to limit the amount that the basic funding for public schools should increase every two years. Before passage of Senate Bill 586 — …

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State legislature passes law that limits growth of basic school funding

Posted
Tamara KimballMike ReynoldsDavid HaggardBy Kim Thompson
Staff Writer

The state legislature has voted to limit the amount that the basic funding for public schools should increase every two years.

Before passage of Senate Bill 586 — the bill limiting growth of school funding that was passed by the legislature — projections to fund schools in fiscal year 2017 would have increased by $85 million. With the passage of SB 586, projected funding to schools is expected to increase by $71 million.

In this issue, it’s to be emphasized that the funding target has never been fully funded anyway. School superintendents routinely estimate 90 to 95 percent of state funding when figuring their budgets.

SB 586 also allows for funding allocated to preschool education for non-public schools.
House Sponsor David Wood (R-Versailles) said SB 586 will make the school funding target one the state can afford.

“The Governor ignored the formula altogether and was looking at imaginary numbers with $550-million coming into the state that we don’t have, and if we did find that money it would be an additional $400-million in two years, which, we can’t find $1-billion in two years,” said Wood.

Many Democrats including Margo McNeil (D-Florissant) said the legislation indicates Republicans do not put a high enough priority on education.

“We have said, ‘Whoops, we’re just going to do what we think we can achieve, not what we should achieve,’” said McNeil. “We have failed to put education first. We have failed to make education the priority it should be.”

Superintendent Tamara Kimball, Fayette R-III Schools, said the formula was based on a “State Adequacy Target” or SAT. She further explains: “The SAT is an amount of money the state says it takes to adequately educate a child, and was intended to increase annually. For several years the SAT remained frozen at $6,131. If the formula were fully funded now under the current law, the SAT would be $6,808. Under SB 586, the SAT would be lowered to $6,241. While that amount is more than what we currently have, it falls short of what we should be receiving now and what we should have received the last several years. This bill reduces the amount of money it will take to fully fund the formula which allows the legislature to say they are fully funding the formula. Instead, they are taking upwards of $450 million away from students statewide, in addition to what has been lost the last several years when the formula was not fully funded. Here is a glimpse of lost revenue for area districts: Fayette $361,380; Boonville, $865,054; Glasgow $164,167; New Franklin $257,891; Harrisburg $323,785; Higbee $103,921.”

Also responding to SB 586, Superintendent Mike Reynolds, Glasgow R-II Schools, expressed a similar sentiment in his email: “Ideally, public schools would not need additional acts by our legislators if indeed our current funding formula was funded at 100 percent.”

New Franklin R-I Schools Superintendent David Haggard wrote that legislators are “playing games by trying to change the formula so that they can claim/boast/pat themselves on the back that they have fully funded education that their formula promised.”

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