Scott's education budget proposal begins to unravel

From the Orlando Sentinel

by Aaron Deslatte

Gov. Rick Scott used his session-opening speech to insist that lawmakers follow his directive to pour $1 billion more into public schools next year.

“Floridians truly believe that support for education is the most significant thing we can do to ensure both short-term job growth and long-term economic prosperity for our state,” Scott told the Legislature earlier this week. “That’s why this session I ask you to continue your commitment to education … On this point, I just can’t budge.”

But Scott’s top education policy chief conceded Thursday what most in the Capitol and education circles already know: that the $1 billion isn’t exactly $1 billion in new money.

Democrats on the House PreK-12 Education Appropriations Subcommittee questioned Scott education policy coordinator Scott Kittel on the break-down of those dollars as well as cuts the governor’s budget would actually make to community-outreach programs for children by making them compete for a smaller pool of grant dollars.

Scott and lawmakers cut $1.35 billion from classroom spending last year in real dollars. The governor’s budget proposal to lawmakers counts $1 billion as an increase by:

- Providing $381 million in extra per-student funding to double money for reading instruction and restoring the reward amount for the School Recognition Program to $100 per student for ”A” schools from $70 per student this year.

- Adding $190 million to pay for the expected 30,567 new students enrolled statewide at $6,230 per-student.

- Restoring $224 million in one-time funding lawmakers put in the budget last year to help transition the state off of stimulus funds that are running out.

- And adding another $220 million to offset the local funding decrease due to an expected 3.23 percent reduction in school property taxes.

So, out of that $1 billion figure Scott uses, only the $381 million is the actual amount that increases overall per-pupil spending. And that doesn’t come close to bringing per-student funding back to where it was before last year’s cuts.

Here’s the math: Lawmakers last year cut per-pupil funding from $6,897 to $6,230 per-pupil on average — a decrease of $667. Scott’s budget proposal would increase the average to $6,372, or an increase of $142 — or restoring roughly 21 percent of last year’s reduction.

While Democrats have criticized the governor’s proposal, Kittel told the panel Thursday that the total funding increase was better than doing nothing to address the expected decline in some sources of education funding. So, while it might not be $1 billion in new money, it is better than a $619 million education cut.

“That is correct that much of this funding goes to replace funds that will not be there next year,” Kittel said. “Those funds will disappear. Without that $1 billion there will be significant decreases. It costs $1 billion in real money to get to these levels of funding.”

Lawmakers Thursday were also concerned with Scott’s proposal to reduce grant funding for “instructional support” programs like the Girl Scouts, State Science Fair, Arts for a Complete Education and Black Male Explorers from $16 million to $12.2 million — and make those programs compete for the dollars by demonstrating some measurable successes in improving learning.

“It’s kind of like doing an end-around and not directly canceling programs,” said Rep. Reggie Fullwood, D-Jacksonville. “Why not take the more direct approach? We have research on all these organizations, so why not be more direct about it?”

Kittel said the governor was trying to infuse more performance measures throughout state government, and this was just one of many ideas.

Rep. Marty Kiar, D-Davie, said forcing programs that serve different populations of poor and under-priviledged children wasn’t a fair competition.

“It just doesn’t work out. People are not on the same playing field,” Kiar said.

But Kittel said Scott was simply trying to inject some market principles into government.

“He doesn’t think the process is broken. He wants to try a different way to force the introduction of accountability measures into the process,” Kittel said. “Not broken. Working just fine. It’s just a recommendation to try it a little differently and get a little better performance out of what we’re doing.”

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2012/01/scott-aide-no-the-1-billion-in-ed-money-isnt-all-new.html