2016/03/30 – Public school advocates’ worries are mounting over K-12 funding after Gov. Phil Bryant called for statewide budget cuts and lawmakers hand out tax credits to businesses such as Continental Tire and pass legislation that would phase out the 3 and 4 percent state income tax brackets.

This is the first legislative session after months of controversial debate leading up to the November vote on Initiative 42, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have required full funding of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. The initiative failed, though backers said the support shown for it in a low-turnout election showed strong concerns about school funding.

This year, Mississippi faces a revenue shortfall of $42 million and large deficits for some agencies, according to the latest numbers.

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves has said, however, he believes that the Senate budget bill brought forward this week will include increased funding for public education across the board, including K-12, community colleges, and colleges and universities.

Reeves said he believes that even if the House approves his proposed tax breaks, which would result in a loss of $18 million in revenue next year, savings can be found elsewhere to offset that loss.

He pointed to several bills that would consolidate state agencies, which he said could save anywhere from $20 to $40 million. The Senate has passed two bills that proposed the consolidations, including combining the Department of Agriculture and Commerce and the Fair, Forestry, and Soil and Water commissions under the umbrella of a new department. The second would create the Department of Medicaid and Human Services, which would include the Division of Medicaid, the Department of Rehabiliation Services and parts of the Department of Human Services.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Buck Clarke, R-Hollandale, said he figured in the $18 million shortfall in his budget numbers this year if the House follows suit and approves the tax cuts.

Clarke’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Herb Frierson, R-Poplarville, said he’s already struggling with how to come up with the money to fund what needs to be funded.

“Well, you know, that just puts you a little deeper in the hole,” he said of the revenue loss that would come from cutting taxes. “I don’t know how to deal with what we got right now.”

Frierson said he hopes education funding will, at minimum, stay at the same level as last year.

Others in the House are reluctant to say at this point what funding for K-12 could look like.

The House Appropriations Committee passed what was essentially a dummy bill that funds MAEP, the formula that determines how much each district needs to provide an adequate education to its students, at the same level as last year but makes cuts of about $7 million in other areas of the education budget.

House Education Chairman John Moore, R-Brandon, said it won’t be until April that actual numbers are nailed down.

“At this point, we have no idea how much money is going to be available, and that’s kind of the problem,“ Moore, who is also a member of the Appropriations Committee, said.

Nancy Loome, executive director of the public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign, said she and her members are concerned about what the tax breaks mean for funding of schools.

“Our members are just aghast. They cannot believe that these same legislators who worked so hard to defeat Initiative 42 and promised to be responsible and do everything they could to make sure education was provided for, and then they come back just a couple months later and slash revenue,” Loome said.

Many legislative leaders have also suggested changing parts of the MAEP formula, including how at-risk students are identified for additional funding and instituting measures to make sure more dollars are spent in the classroom and not on administration.

“School districts over the last 10 to 12 years are spending more at the local level for administration and less on the instructional side,” Moore said, noting that each year the MAEP uses the prior year’s spending to determine funding for the next year.

A 2015 report by the legislative watchdog agency Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Committee showed the salaries of teachers and other instructional personnel declined by about $130 million since 2004, while salaries for administrators increased by about $15 million.

“So, the formula tells us to spend more money on management. … We think that’s insanity in the formula,” he said.

Currently, any child in the free and reduced-lunch program is considered “at risk,” though he or she might not live in poverty. State Auditor Stacey Pickering and several lawmakers have pointed this out as a major flaw in the formula.

Source: Kate Royals, The Clarion-Ledger