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PAGE Letter to Funding Committee of ERC
Dear Dr. Knapp:
We appreciate your work as chairman of Governor Deal's Education Reform Commission (ERC) and are writing to you today specifically in your role as chairman of the Funding Committee of the ERC.
While we must confess disappointment that the commission is not considering the actual cost to adequately educate Georgia students, a topic that has been too long overlooked despite the very good work done by Governor Perdue's Investing in Education Excellence Task Force, we understand and accept the purview of your group.
PAGE supports the Funding Committee's focus on adding emphasis in the revised education funding formula for student poverty. As you know we have many such students in our state, many more than we had a decade ago. We know the Funding Committee is considering how to best accomplish this goal, including using Free and Reduced Lunch eligibility, Direct Certification, or other poverty indicators to identify these needy students. We hope that whatever poverty indicator or indicators the committee settles on are effective in taking into account all students living at various levels of poverty to allow schools to help these students. Measures which "miss" poor students may be of comfort in some quarters, but educators and parents across the state are counting on your group to get those numbers right.
We are also concerned that additional weighted funds based on poverty be utilized in ways that actually address the pathologies of poverty hindering learning and are not simply used to bolster the overall amount provided to a given school or school district. We know more about poverty, its effects on learning, and ways to ameliorate those barriers than we did years ago. Increased funding must be carefully directed to bringing resources to bear that have been proven to address the problem.
PAGE is concerned about providing complete funding flexibility to school systems with regard to school personnel expenditures. We know that the current trend in education policy under IE2, charter systems, and district waivers allows schools to deviate from line item spending mandates, rules which mandate school spending for specific staff including classroom teachers, school counselors, media specialists, school nurses, and other support staff. PAGE believes the state of Georgia has an important interest in continuing to ensure that school employees, and, more importantly, the student services they provide, remain in Georgia schools. The benefits of complete funding flexibility should be carefully weighed against the benefit of ensuring the delivery of student services at a responsible student-to-staff ratio. In the recent past, state funding cuts pushed local class sizes and the student-to-support staff ratios upward. In our view, staff spending mandates create a beneficial tension, encouraging school leaders to balance appropriate and needed student services within budgetary requirements. In other words, flexibility should not become license.
PAGE supports an education funding formula that fairly compensates local districts for the cost of employing the most effective educators, one that fully accounts for the training and experience (T& E) of these educators. It has appeared at recent Funding Committee meetings that the committee members intend to retain educator T & E as a categorical item earned by local districts outside the student base. In order for the state to adequately fund the true cost of employing high-quality educators and encourage continued employment of effective veteran educators with advanced degrees, we encourage the committee to keep T & E out of the student base.
Additionally, the committee should move cautiously in creating a new funding formula predicated on the concept that local school districts will adopt new teacher compensation models. New pay models currently piloted in several districts across the state have not been fully implemented with success. Troublingly, these various teacher pay models are built upon a new statewide teacher and leader assessment and student assessment system about which participants in the ERC'S Teacher Recruitment, Retention, and Compensation Committee have been candidly critical. We strongly recommend against creating a new state education funding formula which hinges on the successful adoption of new employee compensation models by local school districts. Additionally, any new funding formula should reflect the state's responsibility to adjust employee salaries regularly due to inflation and employee cost of living.
We appreciate the opportunity to share our thoughts with you as your committee continues its important work. PAGE stands ready to work with the committee in any way, as needed. We want to be sure that more than 86,000 PAGE members feel that they have input as the funding formula recommendations take shape and that there is full transparency in this process. The buy-in of educators will be a vital aspect inherent in the success or failure of any recommendations. We share your goal of improving Georgia schools and preparing Georgia's students for the 21st century.
Sincerely,
Dr. Allene Magill
| Margaret Ciccarelli
| PAGE Executive Director
| PAGE Director of Legislative Services
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