Education a battlefield in Georgia governor’s race

Education proposals

Republican Nathan Deal: The governor has made updating the state's school funding formula a top priority. He also plans to appoint a group to examine the state's education system and recommend changes, and he would seek modest increases in classroom funding.

Democrat Jason Carter: The state senator wants to provide a separate budget for public education that he says would be free from tinkering by state lawmakers. He also has called for a restoration of school funding lost in austerity cuts over the past eight years.

Libertarian Andrew Hunt: The candidate, a high-tech entrepreneur, is seeking a greater emphasis on math and science courses. He also is promoting an increase in public and private school choices available to parents.

Ongoing campaign coverage

In Georgia, contests for the governor’s office and an open U.S. Senate seat top this year’s ballot, but The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s coverage doesn’t stop there.

Georgia’s top political contenders paint starkly different portraits of how they would chart a new course for the state’s schools, which continue to struggle with crowded classrooms, teacher furloughs and budgets still recovering from nearly a decade of cuts.

The competing education plans play a central role in the heated governor's race, with Gov. Nathan Deal vowing modest increases in classroom funding, a top-to-bottom review of the education system, and a sweeping recalculation of Georgia's school funding formula.

Democrat Jason Carter backs a far-reaching overhaul of the education system that would create a separate school funding budget in hopes of forcing lawmakers to significantly boost k-12 funding.

Both pledges challenge each contender in vexing ways. The governor's vow to update the nearly 30-year-old Quality Basic Education Act formula, a political hot potato that determines funding for Georgia's school districts, would cost a considerable chunk of political capital and could inflame tensions between urban, suburban and rural school districts fighting over a bigger share of the pie.

Carter's plan faces even greater political hurdles. It would require approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature to carve out an education "silo," even though experts cast doubt that doing so would bring lasting changes. And he's struggled to explain how to pay for the surge in education funding without raising taxes — a notion he said is off the table.

A third-party candidate, Libertarian Andrew Hunt, wants to increase public and private school choices available to parents and better emphasize math and science courses.

Separate budget

Carter's education-first platform would create a separate budget for public education, a process that would be unlike any other in the nation. Doing so would require a change in the Constitution and a two-thirds vote by the state Legislature, a lofty — critics say unattainable — goal given the staunch partisan divide.

Other states have explored or implemented novel ways of funding education with varying results. Alabama, for instance, devotes income and sales tax receipts to education, but some studies show it has done little to protect the k-12 system from funding cuts. Carter, for his part, insists it would work by holding lawmakers more accountable.

“Our budget is a shell game. And what we see is every year, politicians in Atlanta take money out of the education fund and spend it on other things,” the Democrat said. “I believe that education has to be our first priority every single year, not just in election years. When times are good and when times are not so good.”

His even stiffer challenge is figuring out how to fund the increase. Carter pledges to cut a “giant amount of waste” in government and more vigorously target tax cheats, but he hasn’t singled out what he would cut to fully fund the education formula, which has been shorted by as much as $1 billion in recent years.

The governor has also relentlessly attacked Carter for voting three times in favor of state budgets that included the education funding shortfalls he’s now criticizing. Carter said he had a change of heart after a tour of schools last year, but Deal mocks it as a politically timed “epiphany tour.” And Deal hammers Carter on the lack of detail in his plan.

“Senator Carter calls what we have now a shell game. But if I’ve ever heard of a shell game, it’s to create a separate budget when he doesn’t tell us how much money he would put in it,” Deal said at a recent debate. “And he doesn’t tell us if there’s a funding source for the separate budget.”

Funding questioned

Deal has been criticized for the election-year arrival of more than $300 million in additional k-12 funding, the largest classroom funding increase in seven years. The governor tells audiences that public education funding now accounts for the highest percentage of the state budget since Carl Sanders was governor in the 1960s.

“We’re doing extremely well in funding public education,” Deal said at one recent stop. “We have emphasized education, we have made reforms at the k-12 level. We believe we set a pattern that is very important to the future of our state.”

National advocacy groups that track education funding report Georgia lags in the bottom half nationally when it comes to per-pupil spending. The state also consistently performs below national levels on standardized tests used to measure student achievement.

Georgia ranked 36th out of 49 in state and local revenue per pupil based on 2011 funding levels, according to the Education Law Center, a nonpartisan education advocacy group. Another study, by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, ranks Georgia as the 12th-worst state for its funding level.

“Not only are Georgia’s funding levels relatively low, they’re also lagging behind in terms of recovery from pre-recession levels, compared to other states,” said Danielle Farrie, the research director for the Education Law Center.

Kristy Flowers, a parent with children in Cobb County schools who leads an advocacy group lobbying for more school funding, said it’s essential for the next governor to significantly increase k-12 funding.

“It will continue to be a battle” after the election, Flowers said. “Because it won’t be an election year, it’ll be even more important that more people voice their opinion on the need for more funding.”

Others aren’t so certain a surge in funding is the answer. John House, a Cobb County middle school teacher, said he worries that other essential government programs will be short-circuited if Carter is elected.

“We have to be a team player. You’ve got to find that balance, and I just don’t know what other programs he’s going to cut. Child welfare services? Corrections?” House asked. “We can’t be the focus all the time.”

A calculated risk

Even if he wins re-election with a convincing victory, Deal’s plan to update the QBE formula would be an uphill climb. The formula was aimed at narrowing the gap between wealthy school districts and their poorer counterparts, and several previous attempts to rework the formula have failed amid political infighting and legal squabbles.

The governor said he’s confident this effort will work, and he often points to his hiring of a well-known local schools superintendent to oversee the push. Many school superintendents and education advocates are eager for an overhaul after years of complaints about the 1985 law.

One reason for the gripes: The formula hasn’t been fully funded in nearly a decade, when the state began making nearly $8 billion in “austerity” cuts. The result has meant years of furloughs, larger class sizes and staff reductions.

Even with this year’s school funding increase, a recent survey by the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute showed 127 school districts have larger class sizes than in the 2009-2010 school year. Forty-nine districts report this year’s school calendar is less than the standard 180-day calendar. And 61 districts reported they’re furloughing educators.

Some school superintendents and education analysts worry changing the QBE formula could ultimately mean schools getting less money, with rural districts suffering the most because they bring in less property tax revenue and depend more on state funding.

Robert Avossa, the superintendent of Fulton County Schools, is among the administrators keeping a wary eye on the formula’s fate. Avossa said that over the past decade, Fulton has had to reduce its budget by nearly $250 million, cutting nearly 1,000 jobs, while the number of students has jumped by about 10,000.

He wants a transparent, understandable and predictable formula that is fully funded. And he also wants the next governor to build in enough flexibility to give districts a say in how they choose to spend the money.

Said Avossa, “We need the state regardless of who’s at the helm, Republican or Democrat, to place education as a priority and allow that priority to be as flexible as possible.”