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DEL.ICIO.USIE2 Update: Just In Time For The New Year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The governor’s 3-year-old Education Finance Task Force — which goes by the catchy little title “IE2,” which stands for Investing in Educational Excellence — will meet next Monday to finalize recommendations on how best to structure the state’s education funding formula.
You may recall that many of the plan’s details — remember the performance model? — have been discussed publicly for months.
Chairman Dean Alford told me this morning that the proposal isn’t likely to change much before it reaches Gov. Sonny Perdue’s desk next week. And Alford still expects the recommendations to be turned into some bills for the Legislature to consider when it reconvenes the following week.
Joe Martin, executive director of the Consortium For Adequate School Funding in Georgia, which has sued the state for not properly funding public schools, supports many details of the task force’s plan.
But, he told me, the governor’s group still hasn’t addressed what Martin sees as the core issue — that is, how to adequately fund public schools. With the threat of additional austerity cuts looming in the next state budget (not to mention all the talk of eliminating some school property taxes), Martin believes his organization’s lawsuit against the state is more important than ever.
“After three years of work by a lot of good people — and a lot of hard work, I should be fair in saying — you may be impressed more by what you don’t see,” Martin said of the expected task force recommendations, “than what you do see.”
UPDATE: Turns out, task force members aren’t going to recommend what to do about the funding formula after all. Instead, they’re only expected to recommend that state lawmakers allow more flexible spending rules for school systems. When they’ll decide what to do about the outdated formula, which was created in 1985, is anybody’s guess.
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