Brawner: Dollars For Schools Set — This Year

Steve Brawner, who writes for the Arkansas News Bureau and Talk Business, knows education issues as well as any reporter in the state.

In his most recent Stephens Media column, he offers a primer and prediction of what may happen with the largest line-item in the state’s budget: K-12 education.

Brawner notes that last week, state lawmakers on the joint adequacy committee preliminary approved a 1.8 percent to 2.5 percent increase in the amount of money spent on public school students.  That’s a $57.7 million to $78.4 million budget increase.

The joint adequacy committee – I don’t think it’s ever been official enough to be capitalized – came into being in 2003. That was the year after the Arkansas Supreme Court decided in what is known as the Lake View case that the state must fund public schools adequately and equitably. That decision came after years of lawsuits that no one wants to revisit, and so, year after year, in and out of recession, Arkansas schools have gotten more money while schools in a lot of other states have seen their budgets cut.

Public schools, in fact, are by far the biggest single recipient of the general revenue that comes from state taxpayers, and over which legislators have the most control. Before the state spends any money anywhere else, it makes sure that public education is funded adequately. This year, the state will spend a little more than $2 billion on K-12 education out of a total general revenue budget of $4.7 billion. It will spend $3.7 billion on public education, counting the money it receives from other sources, such as the federal government. The total state budget is $24 billion, counting those other sources.

Most of that $2 billion constitutes the Public School Fund, which doles out money to school districts according to how many students they have. Each student this school year nets a district $6,267 from that fund, so if six or seven students move away, that’s a teacher’s salary and benefits. That’s why school administrators hate to lose students.

There was a time when schools were getting all kinds of money thrown at them, but the past few years have followed the same routine: The joint adequacy committee has done a study and then recommended a range of increases close to the rate of inflation. Gov. Beebe has settled on an amount in that range and written it in his budget. And then legislators, scared to death of another Lake View case, have rubber-stamped it during the session. They might fuss and argue about other issues, but not about that.

Why is this scenario relayed by Brawner so important? He points out that this cost-of-living increase situation is about to meet a whole new series of political dynamics.

Click here to read that explanation and much more.