Legislators change school funding in a very risky way

Editorial by News and Observer, August 8, 2014.

Public schools have a cornerstone of their budgeting and overall planning process. It’s the long-standing state policy that North Carolina government automatically pays for enrollment growth. Having that assurance is vital as schools go about hiring teachers, planning student assignments and handling increases in the school population.

And in Wake County, it’s all the more important that state support keep pace with growth because the 153,000-student system sees an annual increase of 3,000 students.

But now, Republican legislative leaders have changed a budget policy, making the state’s coverage of enrollment growth no longer automatic.

This is a destabilizing change made by Republicans who have painfully demonstrated their inexperience in crafting budgets. They get crossed up between cutting social programs and pushing conservative policies and knock out budgeting standards that are fundamental and nonpolitical.

School enrollment money is one of those things. It simply means school systems can plan because they know they will have the money to cover increases in enrollment.

But Cary Republican Rep. Nelson Dollar, one of his chamber’s budget writers, defends the lack of a guarantee for enrollment dollars with a weak and curious notion. He says it will make the budget clearer for the public. For instance, he says, when school enrollment is down in some places and the enrollment dollars go down, it looks like a budget cut when it really isn’t.

And he promises the state will provide money for enrollment growth.

First, if the enrollment dollars go down, who cares what it looks like? Everyone knows the figures would naturally fluctuate depending upon enrollment. Second, the promise that the state always will pay for enrollment increases is nice, but school systems can’t budget on promises.

And they can’t afford delays in planning. Administrators say that without the enrollment money guarantee, they’ll have to wait on an uncertain state budget allocation and doing any planning ahead will be impossible. “It simply looks like they’re trying to make all districts front-load their growth and then the check will be in the mail later – or not,” said Wake County Superintendent Jim Merrill. “It’s one more thumbscrew that very much limits our planning.”

There is no sound reason to change this policy. And it’s bothersome that some leading Republicans say they didn’t even know about the change when they voted for the budget. But their answer is that same promise: The state will always pay for enrollment, don’t worry.

Democrats are not so sanguine. If funding runs short as classes are being determined, look out, says Sen. Dan Blue, a Wake County Democrat and the Senate minority leader. “There is built into this budget the probability that class sizes will increase when you don’t fully fund new students,” he says. Could that be intentional on the part of Republicans, who except for a convoluted teacher pay raise plan have not been supporters of public education? One can’t blame public school leaders for their suspicion.

This funding guarantee was easy, and it offered some measure of budgeting comfort in terms of planning. There was utterly no compelling reason to change it.

Republicans could eliminate suspicions on the part of school systems by simply restoring it. Otherwise, school administrators and parents will rightly wonder whether another shoe is about to drop.