Zero percent funding growth too severe

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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The battle is pitched about state education funding.

The Republican-controlled House is considering bills calling for zero percent allowable growth in the school funding formula for the fiscal 2012 budget year. It's one part of efforts to better control overall state spending, a goal we support.

Bills headed to the floor in the Democrat-controlled Senate would boost allowable growth for general K-12 funding by 2 percent and a separate increase for certain other initiatives.

We say it doesn't make sense to squeeze much more from already struggling districts - especially given the ambitious plans for comprehensive educational reform that the governor and incoming Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass want to bring to the table.

Branstad has announced his intention to convene an education summit this summer. Glass, named one of the country's top education reformers, is expected to generate leadership for change. That's good - it will take new ideas and bold plans for our state to reclaim its place as a national leader in education.

But until experts figure out where we want to go with education reform, legislators should give schools enough money to maintain the essentials.

Iowa schools are funded on a per-pupil basis. Although the money actually comes from a mix of state funding and local property taxes, state legislators set a cap on overall school spending: allowable growth.

Fully funding even a zero percent increase will cost the state an estimated $215 million more than last year, when legislators allowed for 2 percent growth but then underfunded the education budget. That gave schools the ability to spend more - as they came up with the missing money themselves by increasing local property taxes and/or drawing on reserves.

But zero percent growth won't be enough to enable increasingly cash-strapped schools to keep up with expenses for long. Cedar Rapids school officials have estimated it would cut about $1.3 million for the 2011-12 school year.

In theory, zero percent allowable growth would encourage schools to look for more efficiencies - ways to stretch our tax dollars further. Do we really need all the administrative bureaucracy in place? Is every program or course vital?

In practice, we fear it would bring many teacher layoffs and larger classes, and trim important programming options. That's not the way to stronger schools.

Fully funding 2 percent allowable growth will cost more - an estimated $70 million over zero percent. But it's money we think legislators should find this year.

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