Education Funding Threatened
Kenneth R. "Ken" Plum
 
        With the lip service given to public school funding by politicians of every stripe, one could conclude that education funding must certainly be the highest priority.  In actuality, public education funding has been threatened the last several years in the House of Delegates.  This year a proposal to change the Standards of Quality by which education funding for localities is calculated would have had a devastating effect on state aid to local school divisions.  By reducing the number of support personnel in the funding formula, the state would have "saved" itself about $600 million.  I led the fight against this change.  You can view one of my speeches on the subject at www.kenplum.com.  The point I made in the debate was that our change in the numbers in the funding formula did not reduce the cost of schools at the local level.  Support personnel would continue to be needed to operate the schools.  All our action did was to shift more costs from the state to localities.  Those costs would be passed on to local citizens through the property tax.  I almost won my argument, and the close vote by which the proposal was passed caught the attention of the budget conferees.  The Senate had not passed any such proposal.  A compromise was reached by the conference committee to not accept the proposal in the budget that was passed this year, but the budget for the next biennium was to be presented in two formats:  one using the current SOQ formula; the other the revised standards for support personnel.
 
        Just last month the State Board of Education received "preliminary estimates" of the budget for the next biennium to be $12.7 billion.  That is the state's share of public education costs for two years.  If the state reduces the number of support personnel it recognizes as being needed in the schools the estimate is $11.9 billion.  The difference has been described as a $754 million savings for the state.  In actuality, if it is adopted it will be a cost shifting of that amount to local governments.  Public school programs will have to be cut, property taxes will need to increase to make up the difference in lost school aid, or both.
 
        On top of this attack on public school funding is the Republican Gubernatorial candidate's transportation funding proposal.  It is simple:  take monies that have historically gone to funding the schools and use them to build roads.  With the decline in revenue at all levels of government with the economic recession and with proposed raids on school funding, it is easy to see how education funding faces several threats.  You can expect me to be in the forefront of saving funding for our public schools and expanding it as additional revenues become available.