A year after Gov. Nathan Deal tried to eliminate vital grants to some of Georgia’s tiniest school districts, he’s reversed himself, calling on the Legislature to nearly double the program.
Administration officials say it wasn’t an election year conversion, but Democrats have their doubts.
Deal last week announced a $20.8 billion budget for fiscal 2015 that includes an additional $547 million for school districts, which he called the largest increase in education funding since before the Great Recession. His spending proposal followed years of austerity cuts that forced districts to furlough teachers, cut the number of school days and raise property taxes.
Administration officials say the school funding increase is a product of the governor’s priorities and the state’s ability to invest more in education in 2014 after years of cutbacks. Democrats say it’s not a coincidence that Deal wants to spend big on schools the year he’s up for re-election. Other governors, Democrat and Republican, have done the same.
Nowhere is the change in Deal’s budget more obvious than with sparsity grants, allotments that have for decades gone to some of Georgia’s smallest, most out-of-the-way school districts.
Last year, Deal called for an end to the $2.6 million program, which provided financial lifelines to about 20 rural systems that are both remote and have little ability to raise much from property taxes. The grants, mostly in the range of $100,000 to $250,000, are a drop in the fiscal ocean for big metro Atlanta systems. In places like Taliaferro County east of Atlanta, they amount to more than 10 percent of the budget.
The Deal administration argued that the state had gone decades without bothering to find out whether the money was going to the right districts.
Lawmakers nonetheless saved sparsity grants last year. This year, the governor recommended nearly doubling funding for the program, to about $5.1 million, and adding schools in more than 20 additional systems. All of the districts that had previously been receiving the grants would continue to get them.
“I am tickled to death that first, it stayed in (the budget) and second, that it was increased,” said state Rep. Tom Dickson, R-Cohutta, chairman of the House budget education subcommittee and a former Whitfield County school superintendent. “Having some way to help those systems provide the quality of education we expect in this state is a necessity.”
Democrats support Sparsity Grants, which began in the 1980s when the party ran the statehouse. But state Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, said of Deal’s proposal, “Turning your back on an education program one year and then restoring and doubling it the next year poses a real question: are you investing in your re-election or investing in our children?”
Brian Robinson, Deal’s spokesman, said the governor put all the money the state could afford into education during his first three years in office. Now the economy has improved enough for Deal to go big on schools. Increasing funding for programs like the sparsity grant has nothing to do with the election, he said.
“The governor always said he wanted to do more for education as soon as he had the chance to do it,” Robinson added. “It doesn’t matter if it’s his re-election year or the year after he wins the election. This will be his priority the next four years.”
He called the process that went into Deal’s shift on sparsity grants an example of “good government.”
The program was on the way out last year because the state Education Department had neglected for years to study the program and decide which districts should get the extra help.
Scott Austensen, the DOE’s chief financial officer, said the same districts had been getting the money for a couple of decades without studies showing they still qualified.
The potential loss of the grant last year would have devastated many of the small districts, some of which have fewer students than a Gwinnett County high school. Years of “austerity” spending cuts by the state have left them few alternatives but to cut teaching positions, furlough those still around, eliminate programs and reduce the number of days of instruction.
When legislators restored the money for the grants last year they also asked state officials to perform the first study of the program in 20 years. Austensen said his agency found that far more schools were eligible and needed the money — some were on the brink of bankruptcy — and officials went to Deal to ask that he fund the program for fiscal 2015, which begins July 1.
Whether re-election year politics were at play in Deal’s decision is largely irrelevant to the small districts hoping for financial help.
Jim Holton, Glascock County school superintendent, said his East Georgia system of about 630 students is three years away from being insolvent.
Under Deal’s budget proposal, Glascock County Consolidated School — it just has one, combining pre-kindergarten through 12th grade — would be added to the sparsity grant list, but the Department of Education hasn’t told Holton how much the system will get.
Like some other rural districts, Glascock gets another grant meant to help equalize funding between property-rich and -poor systems. Glascock’s grant this year, however, is about 30 percent of what it was before the Great Recession.
A mill of property taxes raises about $80,000 in Glascock County. By contrast, it’s closer to $20 million in Gwinnett County, Georgia’s largest system.
“We’re in trouble, maybe more than others, because of our limited ability to raise local revenue,” Holton said. “The education we are able to offer in Glascock County is not equivalent to the education you are able to offer in metro Atlanta.”
Democrats question the timing of Deal’s plan to double sparsity grants, but they have also been vocal about the need to improve the financial condition of rural systems. So they can’t come down too hard on Deal for doubling a grant program they started and strongly support.
“I think it’s more the governor playing politics than doing an evaluation of the effectiveness of the program and supporting it,” said Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson, D-Tucker. “I am glad he came around to the idea that we don’t need to close some of these rural schools.”
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