Poor schools won't get extra funds

"This isn't an education budget, we're moving toward a survival budget," Welch said.

The "equalization" cuts, which were approved in April with little notice, come as some districts are considering restarting a legal fight over what they see as an inadequate school funding system that leaves children behind in poor and rural areas of Georgia.

"It looks to me with the lawsuit still out there, you would think this equalization cut would become Exhibit A," said Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association. "If you're going to cut, why not do it across the board? Why do it to the 75 percent of districts who can least afford it?"

Aides to Gov. Sonny Perdue, who proposed the equalization fund be cut from $548 million to $436 million, said the reductions were an attempt to hold down skyrocketing expenses in a program that is costing taxpayers about twice as much as it did in 2004.

They noted that because of a funding formula Perdue wants to change, much of the money is going to fast-growing suburban counties like Gwinnett rather than poor rural districts. Without the cuts, "equalization" grants would have topped $600 million in the upcoming fiscal year.

"That kind of growth is not sustainable," said Bert Brantley, the governor's spokesman.

School funding, particularly for dozens of poor, rural systems across the state, has been a sore spot for years.

About 135 districts get "equalization" money on top of their regular state allocation to help address the financial disparity between wealthy and poor systems. It all comes out of the taxpayer-funded state general fund, which next year will allocate $8 billion for k-12 education in Georgia. For some small school systems, "equalization" money can account for 10 to 25 percent of their annual budget.

Schools are funded with a mix of state, federal and local tax dollars and funding varies widely between counties that have a large tax base and those that do not. Rural systems generally can't raise as much in property taxes as urban and suburban districts. For example, in 2008, while Atlanta's system was raising about $10,000 locally per student, the city of Pelham in southwest Georgia was raising $666 per child, according to state reports.

Rural school systems across the country have won several lawsuits to force states to increase funding for poor districts. In Georgia, a group of small-town parents and school districts filed suit in 2004, claiming the state was violating the Georgia Constitution by not spending enough money to provide an adequate education.

The group withdrew the suit in 2008 when a new judge was assigned to the case, but another lawsuit is expected.

Joe Martin, a former Atlanta school board president who has led the legal fight against the state, said equalization funding has helped keep poor systems afloat.

"Most systems, particularly the low-wealth systems, have long stopped using it as a supplement to existing funds," Martin said. "They are using it for meat and potatoes. It's been a life-saver."

The reduction in equalization funding comes on top of across-the-board cuts to all systems. Those so-called "austerity cuts" have totaled about $2 billion since 2003.

An austerity funding cut of about 2.8 percent was included in the budget approved by lawmakers and signed into law by Perdue earlier this year. Those cuts were well publicized and hotly debated.

Perdue's proposal to cut the equalization funding passed after receiving little attention or debate. It was included in the fiscal 2010 budget recommendations he gave lawmakers in January and made it through unscathed.

Rep. Edward Lindsey (R-Atlanta), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on education funding, said lawmakers didn't have much of a choice.

The recession forced lawmakers to cut about $3 billion in spending from the current and upcoming years' budgets. Percentagewise, education took a smaller whack than most. But it still lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

"We had a shortfall of money," Lindsey said. "We were trying to spread it out as well as we could."

But there was more to it than that, officials said. Perdue and some lawmakers didn't think suburban districts such as Gwinnett should be getting so much equalization money.

The state's formula grants districts the extra money based on their property wealth per student. Gwinnett, with about 160,000 students, has the largest enrollment in the state. Its tax base doesn't go as far as, say, Fulton's, which has about 100,000 students. Under the state's formula, Gwinnett was ranked as the 56th-wealthiest district in the state, and was eligible for $31.8 million in "equalization" money this year.

Fulton County ranked 11th and got nothing.

Not all suburban districts were eligible for the extra money. But the 15 urban and suburban districts that were eligible this year collected $211 million of the $548.5 million allocated to aid low-wealth districts, according to an analysis of Department of Education funding reports.

The Perdue administration filed legislation the past two years to change the formula used to determine funding. But the bills went nowhere.

While lawmakers didn't change the formula, they went along with the $112 million in budget cuts, which will affect all the "low-wealth" districts, from the poor rural systems to suburban ones like Gwinnett County.

Lawmakers who opposed the move said they could prove devastating to small-town districts.

"It hurts rural and smaller systems more because they have no other way to make up the funding," said House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin), who is running for governor.

The Social Circle city district, ranked 166th among 180 districts in property wealth, will see its equalization funding cut from about $1.5 million to $543,000 in the upcoming fiscal year, according to state figures.

Bettye Ray, superintendent of the system east of Atlanta, said the district is going line-by-line through the budget to make spending cuts. Some employees will be paid for fewer days, she said. "We're a small community, we're an independent system. We don't have a lot of fat."

Welch in Oglethorpe County said his district is cutting positions and packing more kids into classrooms. It's not something he relishes because it's long been argued that children learn better in smaller classes.

"The difference between 32 kids in a high school classroom and 25 is significant," he said.

Jean Quigg of Thomas County in South Georgia said she had to lay off 20 teachers, two counselors and 15 teacher aides because of the cuts. The ROTC program was eliminated and academic coaches were cut.

"This hit us pretty hard," Quigg said.

Few if any superintendents in the state face a tougher task than Paul Fanning, superintendent of the 1,500-student system in the southwest Georgia city of Pelham.

Fanning's district, ranked the poorest in the state in property wealth per student, will get about $1 million less in "equalization" funding during the upcoming year. The austerity cuts all districts are taking will mean another $1 million or so reduction. Equalization funding amounted to about a quarter of the system's budget this year.

Fanning said the school system is the largest employer in town. But it had to abolish 20 percent of its jobs, about 50 positions. Some of those keeping their jobs will lose 10 to 20 days of pay, including the superintendent. Benefits, such as dental and life insurance, salary supplements and retirement contributions, were cut.

"Everybody in the system has been touched," Fanning said. "Unfortunately, we have a lot of fine people who are not going to be working with us next year."

But he added that the cuts won't change the belief that the children of Pelham should receive a first-class education.

"No one has let off the pedal of expectations, they've just taken away some of the gas," he said. "We're still plowing ahead."