State draft limits raises for teachers
The recommended percentage increase in state funding for public schools would be less than in years past under a draft plan released Monday.
House Education Committee Chairman Bruce Cozart, R-Hot Springs, presented the draft in a Monday meeting. The House and Senate Education committees have one more joint meeting to finish their report on public school funding and educational adequacy, which is due to Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Nov. 1.
The educational adequacy report helps determine
how more than $3 billion in public education funding should be spent by districts and whether there should be any increase to ensure an equitable and adequate education for the state’s 476,000 public school children, regardless of what district they are in.
Cozart’s plan calls for a 0.71 percent increase in per-student funding — a rise of roughly $22 million — for fiscal 2018. There was a 2 percent increase is fiscal 2015, followed by 0.97 percent and 0.94 percent increases in fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2017, respectively. Fiscal years start July 1. Approval of the report will be considered in the regular legislative session that starts in January.
“I want to be fair to the taxpayers of Arkansas,” Cozart said. “I want to be fair to our kids, our teachers, our principals, our superintendents, our bus drivers, our cafeteria workers. I want them all to have a good job, at a good pay, and be equal as much as they can be.”
But Sen. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, vice chairman of the Senate committee, questioned the funding recommendation. He cited inflation.
“It’s less than a 1 percent increase,” he said. “It’s less than adequate when we look at the cost-of-living increase.”
Cozart had previously recommended a funding increase of 1.15 percent, or about $35 million. Compared with that proposal, the new draft reduces the amount of money intended for teacher salaries, technology and substitute teachers, among other categories. Compared to the older proposal, proposed funding for operations, maintenance and transportation increased.
“It gives us a little more room for flexibility in other things,” Cozart said in an interview. That includes a proposal, presented Monday, that would set up a $4.3 million program to match school expenditures for “evidence-based” programs that close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.
Schools receive up to $1,560 per student who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, but lawmakers said at a September 2015 meeting that the funds are being used too broadly and there wasn’t evidence that the gap is narrowing.
“It was intended to support struggling students,” Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key said Monday in an interview. “There are a lot of allowable uses. I don’t know that there’s agreement that those are all in support of struggling students.”
The matching program would require schools to show the state funds were spent in a way backed by research.
Earlier this month, Lindsey made a motion, which the committee approved, to recommend increasing funding by $20 million to the “catastrophic fund.” That program reimburses schools for educating students with severe disabilities. There’s currently $11 million a year placed in the fund, but it has about $30 million a year in eligible expenses.
House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, has called for that recommendation to be expunged, but a vote to do so has not taken place. Gillam said the Oct. 3 meeting where the recommendation was approved was poorly attended and not everyone understood what they were voting on.
Cozart said the cut in his recommended funding increase was not related to Lindsey’s motion, but was because some of the increases proposed originally would not address educational adequacy.
While committee members have been working on a blueprint for education funding, Hutchinson has called for an income tax cut for Arkansans.
For every $2 more per student the state provides, the total state budget increases by almost $1 million. This year, the state provides $6,646 per student, from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The state ranks No. 31 in the nation for per-student funding. On average, Arkansas spent $9,538 per student in the 2012-13 school year, according to a draft report. That number includes contributions from federal, state and local governments.
Cozart said he’s open to changes on his draft plan. The House and Senate Education committees will meet jointly once more on Monday to consider educational adequacy.
“We will have the adequa- cy report finished that day,” he said. “It may be a long day.”