Education funding surges in governor’s budget

Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today

Credit: Legislative Annotator's Office

The Legislative Analyst's Role'due south graph shows that Gov. Brown's proposed budget would raise G-12 per-educatee spending to $9,571, nigh $200 above the pre-recession level – when adjusted for inflation. The LAO notes that this number excludes any Prop. 98 funding for child care and preschool, since some of those programs accept shifted in and out of Prop. 98 over the last several years. It too excludes adult didactics in preceding years, since the new adult education program is funded out of the community colleges' appropriation in 2015-16 and is non beingness counted as K-12 spending.

Increases in state money for Grand-12 schools and community colleges are projected to deadening starting in 2 years, when temporary taxes from Proposition 30 starting time drying up. But for now, there'll be buckets of money.

In the financial twelvemonth starting July i, schools are expected to receive $seven.viii billion more than than Gov. Jerry Dark-brown had budgeted for them this yr. That's about a 12 percent increment, according to the land budget the governor announced Friday. The state cut schools unduly to other programs and services during the recession, and then they are entitled to a bigger share in the recovery, Brown said at a printing briefing.

The surge in revenue will raise what the land is obligated to spend through Proposition 98 next year for schools and community colleges to $65.7 billion. Chiliad-12 schools will go about 90 percentage of the total, with the majority of new money – $4 billion – going to the Local Command Funding Formula, a new system channeling more than funding to districts with high concentrations of English learners and low-income students. It is now the main source of schools' operating budgets. That spending total would be an 8.vii percentage increase, an average of about $670 per student more than districts got concluding twelvemonth. The increase for schools, Brown said, "protects kids, specially those who confront the biggest barriers to success."

But Chocolate-brown, concerned about committing that much to ongoing spending, wants to use some of the new dollars for sometime uses. That volition include $1.i billion that districts volition be encouraged to spend to implement the Common Cadre standards in math and English language linguistic communication arts, the new English Language Development Standards for English learners and the Side by side Generation Science Standards. Two years agone, the state appropriated $1.25 billion for that purpose.

Adjacent year's budget volition also channel $750 million – $250 million in each of the next three years – for a career and technical didactics "incentive grant." That money will supplement the $500 million budgeted the terminal two years for the Career Pathways Trust Program, which prepares students for college and careers, and will require matching coin from districts, charters and county offices of pedagogy.

While Brown said that schools and customs colleges deserve a bigger share of the new revenue, they are also legally entitled to information technology. In a rare alignment of fiscal stars, they will get nearly every dollar of the unanticipated increase in Full general Fund revenue this year because of the statutory requirements of Proposition 98, a funding formula for schools that voters passed in 1988. It requires that, in some high-revenue years, the land repay schools and community colleges for the Prop. 98 IOUs accumulated in poor revenue years.

This is a repayment year, and the new, higher Prop. 98 base of operations obligation volition continue to 2015-16. Merely the University of California and the California State Academy systems aren't entitled to whatever of  that, since they are funded outside of Prop. 98. UC officials are threatening to heighten tuition by v percent next year if they don't get more than than the $120 million that Brownish has approaching.

Other social and health programs volition have the same problem. Nearly all boosted not-Prop. 98 revenue in 2015-16 volition go into a new rainy day reserve, not ongoing programs, under the terms of Proposition 2, which voters canonical 2 months ago.

The proposed $65.7 billion generated by Prop. 98 in 2015-16 represents a 39 percent increase since 2011-12, raising per-student spending by $ii,600 during that time. The Legislative Analyst'south Office calculated that the proposed average per-pupil spending volition be virtually $200 per student above the pre-recession level of 2007-08, adjusted for inflation, although under the Local Command Funding Formula, many districts will become less (run into graph, with caveats). Average per-student spending volition yet proceed to lag backside about states. (Update: The Legislative Analyst's Office bug an overview of the proposed state upkeep on Jan. 13. You can read it here.)

Increased revenues volition enable the state to pay the final $i billion installment of the $ten billion in late payments owed to schools, known as deferrals, which compounded cash-flow headaches for many districts during the recession. Notwithstanding, districts will also be paying nearly $1 billion more in teacher and ambassador pensions in 2015-16 under a deal to keep the California Country Teachers Retirement System solvent. That obligation will ascension to $3.1 billion per twelvemonth in boosted payments in 2019-xx.

In two other areas, Brown had mixed news for school districts.

• Brown's budget summary indicated, and Michael Cohen, director of the Department of Finance, confirmed that the governor intends to end the current country programme for funding schoolhouse construction bonds, which has totaled $35 billion since 1998. Instead of issuing bonds and funding all districts on a showtime-come, outset-served basis, Brown plans to scale back the state's overall commitment and target money, on a sliding scale, to districts without the belongings taxation base and financial resource to build schools, according to a summary of the budget (page 27). The certificate details his objections to the current organisation and says that the administration is open to discussing the new formula.
• Chocolate-brown too said the administration is open to changing the policy that places a cap on district budget reserves that the California School Boards Association has strongly objected to. Brown inserted the language, potentially limiting how much districts tin can keep on hand for emergencies, tardily in the upkeep procedure. "The administration appreciates the concerns expressed by stakeholders regarding potential caps on school district reserves and volition engage in a dialogue with these groups in the coming months to protect the financial security and health of local schoolhouse districts," the budget summary stated.

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Source: https://edsource.org/2015/education-funding-surges-in-governors-budget/72662