Delay in education formula overhaul could be ominous

2. Points and a per-pupil funding level are assigned to each student. In general, more points and funding are assigned for kindergartners than middle school students, and more for middle school students than for high school students. Additional points and funding are assigned for vocational students, alternative students, special education or gifted students, those in remedial programs and those who need English-language assistance.

3. Points and funding are adjusted according to the training and experience of a district’s teachers — the “T&E factor.”

4. The number of students is multiplied by the per-pupil amount based on their grade level and needs. That figure is multiplied by the T&E factor.

5. The state adds funding for indirect costs such as maintenance, school and central office administration, media, and professional development. This produces a figure known as a district’s QBE formula earnings.

6. The state subtracts from a district’s QBE formula earnings an amount equal to 5 mills of local property tax.

7. The state has typically withheld an additional amount from a district’s QBE formula earnings in so-called “austerity cuts.” Legislators have said that such cuts are needed to help balance the state’s budget in times of austerity.

8. The state adds grant funding for such needs as transportation and nursing.

Gov. Nathan Deal is getting a lesson already learned by his predecessors: revamping the state’s education funding formula is harder than it seems.

The governor hoped to deliver a long-promised overhaul of the calculus next year but now says he’ll delay action until the 2017 legislative session. Grappling with the decades-old formula in an election year may have proved too much for the Republican and his legislative allies, who urged him to tap the brakes.

Deal’s proposal to redo the program, known as the Quality Basic Education formula, was the centerpiece of his re-election campaign last year, and he vowed on the stump that he would tackle the changes in early 2015. But he’s already delayed his plans twice since he won a second term last fall.

The new timing could jeopardize a rewrite of the formula, which is sometimes considered the third rail of state politics. Georgia’s political landscape will likely be very different in 2017, as Deal nears the end of his tenure and the jockeying to succeed him escalates.

The governor said Wednesday that such a “major undertaking” will require more time. Deal spokesman Brian Robinson pledged that the governor will give it the “time it takes to get it right and build consensus,” and he said Deal’s office is committed to following through before his term ends in 2019.

Formula was major campaign issue

Deal made overhauling the formula one of his first campaign promises in a race against Democrat Jason Carter that focused on education policy. He spoke of a dire need to rework the math during stump speeches across the state and vowed in his campaign manifesto to "update the 1985 school funding formula to meet the needs of a 2015 classroom."

Yet he quickly postponed the pledge after he was elected, sending the debate to a study committee while he shifted his attention toward a new plan, largely unmentioned on the campaign trail: to create a statewide “Opportunity School District” with powers to take over Georgia’s most distressed schools. This week’s delay pushes back the timeline again.

Democrats seized on it as a sign of an unfulfilled promise. State Sen. Vincent Fort, one of Carter’s staunchest allies, said the snag over the formula is “unfair to the people of Georgia.”

“Everyone agrees that it’s outdated, it’s antiquated and, most importantly, it’s unfair,” said Fort, D-Atlanta. “This shows that Nathan Deal is more concerned with taking over schools than he is in fairly funding schools.”

But the postponement was welcome news to some anxious local school officials. Tim Cochran, the superintendent of rural Atkinson County Schools, said administrators are “fearful” over what could happen to sparsely populated areas with relatively small tax rolls.

“I’m just nervously awaiting the recommendations because I don’t know what they’re going to do that could be as equitable as what we have now,” Cochran said.

Narrowing the gap

The funding formula was designed in 1985 to narrow the gap between wealthier school districts and their poorer rural counterparts. It was controversial from the start, and cries for an overhaul only grew over the decades, with critics saying it has outlived its purpose and didn't foresee changing technology needs and maintenance requirements.

“It’s written around the idea of everything being bricks and mortar,” said Angela Palm, a veteran lobbyist for the Georgia School Boards Association. For instance, it doesn’t address developments such as virtual academies, she said. “There are a lot of options that in 1985 nobody every dreamed would happen.”

Deal is only the latest governor to attempt a major overhaul of the program.

Roy Barnes wanted a full-scale review of the funding formula to develop what he called a “seamless” education system. Instead, his efforts brought big changes to other areas, such as the elimination of tenure for teachers and smaller class sizes.

Sonny Perdue followed Barnes with an “Investing in Educational Excellence” program that was initially aimed at devising a new per-pupil funding formula. But Perdue’s task force ended up pivoting toward a call for more flexibility in funding for local school districts after three years of study.

And Deal's first effort to redo the formula stumbled as well. An Education Finance Study Commission he created in May 2011 to study the funding system recommended a "smoothing" of the formula, but the panel stopped short of endorsing a plan to rewrite it after several meetings.

Barnes, a Democrat who tried to unseat Deal in 2010, suggested the governor may have underestimated the challenge.

“The problem in rewriting the formula is that it is hard to come up with something better, and the budget is tight,” said Barnes, who was a sponsor of the formula while in the state Senate in the 1980s. “Any empirical study of education costs will show we need more money, not less.”

A history of challenges

The school funding formula has often been shortchanged. Over the past decade, including budget surplus years and others clouded by the Great Recession, the state held back nearly $8 billion in so-called “austerity” cuts; that cumulative amount is about equal to the current fiscal year’s worth of formula funding.

Education officials have called on the state to “fully fund” the formula, to at least give districts all that it entitles them to receive. Democrats have taken up the call in election-year campaigns. Deal and other Republicans, meanwhile, say they’re being held to an unfair standard.

"Too often, I think the General Assembly and governors have been held accountable for not funding this program that has never been fully funded," Deal told one crowd. "It needs to be looked at in modern-day terms, to see if there are more appropriate ways for our funding to be directed."

State Rep. Terry England, R-Auburn, was among those urging Deal to slow down. England said the formula is so complicated that “you’ve got to be a rocket scientist” to understand it. He and others tapped by Deal to study the problem simply need more time, he said.

“The last thing any of us wants to do is what the last five, six or seven commissions did before us and just tweak it a little bit,” said England, the chairman of the House’s budget-writing committee. “It definitely needs to be updated.”

Politics always a factor

Charles Knapp, the former University of Georgia president who leads Deal’s education commission, said next year’s legislative elections played into calls for a delay, but he said there is no safe time for such vast changes. The next gubernatorial election, after all, looms in 2018.

“All of these things bear on the politics of getting this through,” he said.

Education experts, though, said the delay doesn’t necessarily mean the pitch is dead.

Former state schools Superintendent John Barge, who unsuccessfully challenged Deal in last year’s GOP primary, said he has no doubt the governor will succeed in the overhaul if he puts the full force of his office behind it.

“When there is something he wants, he will get it,” said Barge, who now leads McIntosh County’s school district on Georgia’s coast. “This governor has a history of it.”