Many people assume that every public school student in Georgia enjoys the same educational opportunities.
They’re wrong.
Because school funding is increasingly dependent on local property taxes to supplement dwindling state dollars, ZIP codes play a role in classroom quality.
But it is not simply a community’s affluence that matters. It’s also whether that community is willing to tax itself to pay for the “extras” that elevate a basic education into an excellent one.
All the state of Georgia promises to pay for is a basic education. And it uses an outdated formula to define “basic,” a formula now under review for a sixth time by a brand-new committee that met Thursday to hear some hard truths.
“We are not going to come up with a formula that reaches for excellence. We are not putting an orchestra in every school,” said outgoing House Budget Office director John Brown. “We are going to create a formula so that every school system has enough money to get the basic job done.”
The state has done little updating of the Quality Basic Education formula it adopted in 1985. QBE underfunds transportation, barely recognizes technology needs and shortchanges districts on maintenance and textbooks.
On top of those shortfalls, the Legislature has enacted more than $1 billion in austerity cuts to the formula.
In fact, Brown wondered which side would have won if the 2004 lawsuit over insufficient funding by rural school systems had ever made it to court. (In 2009, the state attorney general finally ruled that the nonprofit corporation created by the districts suing the state lacked legal standing, ending the long saga.)
“While the lawsuit was not an equity suit per se, we need to be mindful of putting enough money in the formula so that any school system, even the poorer ones, have enough money to educate children,” Brown said.
(Brown’s candor may have been due to his imminent departure to the Board of Regents, where he will work for newly appointed University System Chancellor Hank Huckaby. In any event, his frankness was refreshing.)
The most recent effort to overhaul how Georgia funds school was former Gov. Sonny Perdue’s Education Finance Task Force. But after 75 public meetings and discussions with 105 school systems, the committee ended up recommending only greater spending flexibility to systems that meet higher academic bars.
Brown sat through all those task forces and blamed the repeated failures on two factors: governors who demanded recommendations that were “revenue neutral,” and overly ambitious committees that produced “wish lists” out of whack with economic realities.
Yet, he advised this latest committee to “let the chips fall where they may. ... I don’t think there is any way you are going to come up with a list of recommendations that says we ought to be spending less money on education than we are now.”
However, Brown counseled restraint in the committee’s scope, saying: “I am all for thinking out of the box. But it is my belief that you cannot afford to go on a quest, hearing from many, many school systems in search of best practices in order to build a formula. The formula has to be a common denominator. There has to be enough money so that any of the 180 school systems could adequately educate a child.”
But what comprises an adequate education?
The 20 committee members shared their views on the elements they deemed essential, ranging from quality preschool to seamless dual-enrollment programs. Some suggested that a funding formula should include after-school programs, school nurses, parental outreach, graduation coaches, school security and counselors.
As co-chairman of the committee, state Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, said members would have to wade into the thorny issue of school choice and how to foster innovation and flexibility. “We can talk about the funding formula all day long,” he said. “But our academic performance in this state is mediocre at best. The growth of school choice is here. We have to think about it.”
School choice may prove a point of contention on the committee.
“We do need a robust discussion about school choice relative to charters, magnet schools and everything else,” agreed Kelly Henson, Professional Standards Commission head and committee member. “But I will go ahead and give you my bias. I am opposed to giving one penny of taxpayer money to private schools. I think it is wrong. I am sorry that we ever did it. And I am doubly sorry that we did it without providing any accountability on those folks.”
Chancellor Huckaby cautioned that innovation had to be tethered to real accountability when public funds were at stake. He earned a laugh when he noted that in some instances in Georgia, “flexibility translated to long prison sentences.”
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