Governor reaches for middle ground in education budgets

Friday, April 30, 1999 | 12:25 p.m.

At the same time, Guinn's deputy budget director, Don Hataway, is asking lawmakers to consider relaxing restrictions on class-size reduction money.

The changes added up to a net increase of $12.9 million next year and $13.6 million in 2001 to the public education budget. That will bring the distributive school account, the largest state government budget, to $2.8 billion for the biennium.

Of that total, $1.38 billion comes from the state general fund. The bulk of the rest is from property and sales taxes earmarked for public schools.

One of the main sticking points with the Democrat-dominated Assembly is that rising sales and property tax revenues automatically reduced the state's share of funding for public schools because the formula provides local schools a base level of funding per student. More state tax revenue means the counties provide a larger share to provide that base sum.

School districts can go above that amount per student but if they drop lower the state makes up the difference.

Education advocates argued the budget for kindergarten through grade 12 was too tight under Guinn's original budget and didn't even increase the state's base per pupil guarantee. They said he should leave the extra money generated by rising taxes instead of pulling it out to use elsewhere.

Hataway told the legislative money committees Thursday that the governor wants the money to go for books, teacher training and school improvement programs, not salaries.

In addition, Guinn agreed to drop the controversial "salary savings" category from the schools budget. State agencies all have a salary savings category in their budgets as a negative dollar amount. That represents the amount an agency will return to the state from positions that are vacant all or part of a year.

School districts in the past have been allowed to collect and use that money. Creating a salary savings category in the education budget would let the state reclaim unused salary money.

Hataway said Guinn wants lawmakers to consider expanding the allowable uses for what is now class size reduction money to include "all activities and programs for school improvement."

He said the added money should be used for textbooks, teacher training programs and students who need extra help. Some money would go to developing tests to determine how well schools are teaching.

That drew protests from several members of the subcommittee, including Assemblywoman Jan Evans, D-Sparks, who said the plan should have been presented earlier in the session.

The committee is scheduled to act on the education budgets next week.