Capitolwire.com Report on Education Spending Claims

This report was posted with permission from Capitolwire.com.

Capitolwire: Democrats say numbers show Republican education-spending claims exaggerated

By Erin Halasz
Staff Reporter
Capitolwire.com

HARRISBURG (Sept. 2) - Republican lawmakers say their budget proposal would give school districts an average funding increase of 11 percent, but school-funding advocates say fuller analysis shows a 2 percent hike.

Many pushing for increases in education spending argue Republican legislative leaders have combined funding streams that have little to do with one another, creating spending comparisons that do not make sense.

To calculate the increase districts would receive under the Republican spending plan, GOP lawmakers compared last year's spending on two line items with proposed spending on five line items, three of them from the federal stimulus package.

Usually only two line items - the state's subsidies for basic education and special education - are included in discussions of state funds that schools can use as they choose.

Last year the basic education subsidy was $5.6 billion, and the special education subsidy cost just more than $1 billion.

This year, Republicans added three targeted streams of money from the

$787 billion federal stimulus package, creating a cost comparison Gov.

Ed Rendell, Democratic lawmakers and many teachers' advocates have characterized as unsound. Instead, they say all federal and state line item totals for K-12 education this year must be compared to all federal and state funds provided for K-12 education last year. That comparison, unlike the Senate GOP figures, they said, produces an accurate view of the rise in education spending.

"They're comparing one pot of money last year to three pots of money this year and saying, 'Look, we increased it by 11 percent,'" said Michael Race, spokesman for the state Department of Education. "They added pots of money to the basic education allocation that they're proposing to mask the fact that they're not increasing basic education by a dime."

Republicans argue that because the targeted stimulus money was unexpected and schools can use some of it as they choose, it makes sense to include the new federal dollars when discussing state financing of education.

"Our belief is that how we presented it is the fairest apples-to-apples comparison," said Erik Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware. "It takes actual new federal money that, before the stimulus, schools weren't expecting."

To learn about the conflicting opinions on how the targeted stimulus money can be spent, read a Capitolwire report.

When determining the percent increase, GOP lawmakers also did not take into account many other line items, such as Pre-K Counts and the Head Start program for low-income preschoolers, that would see cuts under Republican proposals.

Including all those line items paints a different picture, according to analysts at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a Harrisburg think tank that has strongly supported higher state and federal education spending.

Their comparison of all the K-12 education-spending lines shows the most recent Senate-sponsored plan would yield a 2 percent, or $213.9 million, increase in funding for schools. They reported the House Democratic plan would increase school funding overall by 16 percent, or $1.5 billion.

State spending would decrease under both proposals - by $119.4 million under the Democratic plan and $735.9 million under the GOP proposal.

For some, even the 2 percent increase is too high.

"Does that change our opinion of the plans?" said Nathan Benefield, director of policy research at the conservative Commonwealth Foundation, in an email. "No - both perpetuate continued unbridled growth in education spending and don't do anything to reform the spending side of the ledger."

Rather than increase spending, lawmakers should work to bring the costs of education down by reforming prevailing wage laws and requiring voter approval for all property-tax increases, among other changes, Benefield said.

For those in favor of increasing the state's spending on education, improving Pennsylvania's schools means investing more money now to offset high and often uneven payments by local property-tax payers.

The targeted stimulus money would not help meet that goal, according to some education-funding advocates.

Michael Wood, research director at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, said the targeted stimulus money should not be included in discussions of the education budget. The money is appropriated differently in different budget bills, creating what Wood called a skewed comparison.

Without that money, Senate GOP-proposed education spending would be 4 percent, or $355.1 million, lower than last year, and the House Democratic plan would result in a 2 percent, or $163.5 million, education-spending hike, according to Wood's analysis.

As for the stimulus dollars, they may not help school districts reduce their budgetary needs this year.

"You have additional funds, so it's easy to make the argument that school districts will get more money, and that's correct," said Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials. "But the devil in the details is you get more money with many restrictions about how you spend that. You end up with funding dedicated to certain of your expenditures, but that doesn't necessarily translate to a reduction of your existing expenditures."