Friday News Roundup: Week of July 30-August 3

Alabama education fund revenue on pace to meet expenses

Sending more money to classroom part of Ohio Governor John Kasich’s plan to revamp school funding

University of Hawaii Foundation raises $66.9 million during fiscal year for public university system

California reaches deep into special funds to pay for schools, prisons, social services

Alabama education fund revenue on pace to meet expenses
Alabama finance officials said this week that they expect the state’s Education Trust Fund will collect enough revenue to meet its fiscal year 2012 target and avoid across-the-board spending cuts next year. The Finance Department reported that the trust fund has already raised $4.51 billion in the first 10 months of the 2012 fiscal year ending on September 30, 2012. That’s a 5.9 percent increase over the same fiscal year 2011 period. However, a legislative maneuver passed earlier this year also transferred $40 million from the fiscal year 2012 fund for use in 2013, so the fund will have to grow by 6.3 percent over the entire fiscal year 2012 period from 2011 levels if it is to break even with the $40 million in extra fundraising. The fund primarily collects money from state income and sales taxes, and has fluctuated with the economic ups-and-downs of the recession. More here…

Ohio Governor John Kasich plans to send more money to classroom and part of funding revamp
Ohio Governor John Kasich’s administration is working to design a new school funding formula, to be released early next year with the governor’s fiscal years 2013-2014 biennial budget. Since 1997, when the Ohio Supreme Court found the state’s school finance system unconstitutional, three other rulings have reached the same conclusion because it relies too much on local property taxes, severely disadvantaging land-poor school districts. The plan will allegedly include decreases in funding for administration, but divert more money to classroom costs. That may entail pooling districts’ services across a region to save administrative costs. Several House Finance Committee members in the state legislature are also taking on the challenge of rewriting the formula, and have embarked on a statewide tour to hear public opinion. Democrats in the legislature, however, are concerned that the funding formula will cut total dollars spent on K-12 schools, rather than simply shifting them to instructional costs. More here…

University of Hawaii Foundation raises $66.9 million during fiscal year for public university system
The University of Hawaii Foundation, a nonprofit organization that is separate from the university itself, raised $66.9 million for the school in fiscal year 2012. The funds will go to supporting the school’s 10 campuses. A plurality of the funds, $19.3 million, came from individual donors who were not alumni. University alumni contributed $15.4 million, while corporations donated $13.1 million to the school system, and foundations funded $13.3 million. According to the foundation, the fundraising included nearly $17 million for student aid. Faculty support was the next biggest category at $11.6 million, and funds for facilities totaled $10.4 million. More here…

California reaches deep into special funds to pay for schools, prisons, social services
California’s budget includes 560 “special funds,” accounts designated for specific purposes that collect revenue from particular taxes or fees. Because of the recession, the state has increasingly borrowed from those funds to afford educational and social services and prison costs that would otherwise be paid for from the state’s general fund. California currently owes those special funds $4.3 billion, more than five times the amount owed in fiscal year 2008, although the special fund dollars – $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2013 – comprise only a small portion of the $91.3 billion 2013 state budget. Governor Jerry Brown has promised to repay the funds with interest, but has no way to do so unless voters pass his suggested tax hikes in the November elections. Still, even before the recession, the state had failed to repay $448 million in special fund loans from 2002 and 2003, and $1.3 billion of the outstanding loans are not tied to repayment by any particular date. More here…