NC EDUCATION BUDGET DETAILS - ROWAN COUNTY! READ THESE PLEASE! Proposed K-12 Education Budgets: From Bad to Worse Advocating for high-quality public schools for North Carolina. Questions? Write us at: [email protected] PO Box 6484 Raleigh NC 27628 – (919) 576-0655 Three K-12 budgets have been proposed, one by the Governor, and one each by the NC House and Senate. Each cuts funding to public education in different and significant ways. North Carolina’s public schools have suffered from chronic underfunding. Yet, despite a Constitutional mandate to ensure the delivery of a high quality public education for all students, all three budgets call for reductions in personnel and other critically needed resources that severely compromise that mandate. The severest cut called for in all three budgets amounts to $376 million. The Senate budget calls for specific line item cuts, while the Governor’s and House budgets propose discretionary cuts. A budget must be approved by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1, or an extension plan created to bridge to the final approval of a new biennial budget. To reconcile differences in the three budgets, negotiations will occur behind closed doors in House and Senate conference committees. Governor McCrory’s proposed budget for K-12 education allocates $85 million or 1.1% less than the amount needed just to maintain current levels of service. It does not attempt to restore the cuts of more than 4,000 teaching positions over the past 3 years. As mentioned previously, the Governor’s budget includes discretionary cuts of more than $376 million. These cuts would be in addition to cuts that could be made to other programs (i.e. professional development, textbooks). Discretionary cuts are a practice that began as a response to the need to drastically tighten budgets during the recent recession. In practice, they function like a budget “shell game.” School districts are allocated state funds, but then have to immediately return that allocation back to the state. The state allows the local district “discretion” to make cuts as they see fit to meet their obligation to return funds. That is why some things called for in the Governor’s budget may not happen at the local level. For example, the 981 new teacher positions included in this budget to accommodate student growth may not materialize, as school districts may be forced to fund other necessities in lieu of hiring additional teachers—requiring school systems to either cut more course offerings or overcrowd more classes. The Governor’s budget also ignores the requirements of the Education Lottery law, allocating only 20% (instead of the required 40%) to capital needs. Additional lottery funds are allocated for digital learning ($43 million) and for 5,000 new NC Pre-K slots ($17 million). After salary freezes for four of the last five years, the Governs budget proposes a slight 1% salary increase for all school employees. The Senate budget eliminates class size maximums, slashes teaching assistants, and offers no salary increases for teachers. By raising class size, it will effectively eliminate 5,200 classroom teachers. Over the last four years, NC’s public schools have lost 17,278 positions and laid off 6,167 people (35% teachers, 33% teaching assistants) while the number of public school students has grown about 16,000. While overall cuts to public education in the House budget are not quite as drastic, they do include $50 million for school vouchers and almost $1 million over two years for the school “choice” lobby group, Parents for Educational Freedom NC to develop charter schools in rural areas.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 21:09:15 +0000
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