If the question before state legislators is, “How much money should schools get?” then the answer the past few years has been pretty easy to predict: “More.”
Such is the case again as the state Legislature prepares to convene its fiscal session in Little Rock on Feb. 13. That’s the biennial meeting, created by voters in 2008, where legislators are supposed to talk only about one-year fiscal matters and then go home.
Gov. Mike Beebe’s proposed budget pretty much freezes spending except in two major funding areas: Medicaid, which will require more money because costs are skyrocketing, and education, which will get $56 million more because no one wants the state to return to court.
Everyone in state government is terrified of that. You’ll recall that the state spent 15 years as a defendant after the small and impoverished Lake View School District filed a lawsuit on the grounds that the “general, suitable, and efficient” education required by the Arkansas Constitution was not being provided to its students.
“General, suitable, and efficient” came to be seen as “adequate” and “equitable” throughout the long process, and by the time the Arkansas Supreme Court was ready to let go, the entire educational system had overhauled the way it spends money on students.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
This is an improvement in some ways and not in others, depending on your perspective.
If you’re a kid who lives in a poor district, it’s better because the state is more successfully ensuring that you have access to a substantially equal public school education as your peers in wealthier ones. It’s also better for those wealthier kids because the state really has made an increased commitment to public schools in general.
It’s worse if you’re the type who is uncomfortable with judges having a lot of power in taxing and spending decisions. It’s also worse if you have a need served by other areas of state government because there is only so much money to go around, and public schools are taking a big hunk of it.
Here’s how Gov. Beebe matter-of-factly described the current climate during a December speech before the state’s school board members: “… The Court said if you’ve got to let every rapist out of prison, if you’ve got to close every nursing home, if you’ve got to close every college in order not to take a penny away from K through 12 adequacy, do it.”
Think about that the next time a political figure proposes amending the constitution, state or federal, in a way that would give the Supreme Court, state or federal, more control over the way we spend our money.
Now, each year the school funding process begins in the Legislature, where an Adequacy Committee made up of members from the House and Senate education committees studies the issue for a while and then comes up with a number. This year, the committee recommended schools get an increase of $56 million, with per-pupil spending increasing from $6,144 to $6,266.
Funding per student is in large part how schools get their money, so it’s a big deal, especially in smaller districts, when a few families move out of town.
Unfortunately, a potentially unsustainable habit may be forming. The Adequacy Committee proposes an increase, the governor puts it in his budget and the Legislature as a whole approves it without a lot of debate. Legislators fear some lawyer could decide that their failure to OK that committee’s recommendation would demonstrate a lack of commitment to adequacy itself, and then the state would be back in court.
“For better or worse,” Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway, co-chair of the Joint Budget Committee, said in an interview, “we as the entire Legislature and governor are at the mercy of the result that the Adequacy Committee comes up with.”
Most Arkansans probably would agree that public schools should be among the state’s highest priorities. However, the state also is looking at some very difficult funding issues during the next few years. Medicaid costs are projected to start rising scary fast, regardless of what happens with health care reform.
Meanwhile, Congress eventually will figure out that the easiest way to reduce the federal budget deficit will be to assign more responsibility but send less money to the states.
At that point, state legislators may have to decide that there really is a difference between “more” and “adequate” and hope nobody disagrees enough to sue.
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Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. His blog — Independent Arkansas — is linked at Arkansasnews.com. His e-mail address is brawnersteve@mac.com.