Friday News Roundup: Week of May 14-18

North Carolina House GOP considers merit pay money for schools

Dispute over college tuition roils flagship Texas campus

Alabama education trust fund budget approved

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell vetoes $66 million from Alaska budget

North Carolina House GOP considers merit pay money for schools
North Carolina House Republicans voted in a closed-door meeting this week to reallocate some 2013 funds previously designated for merit pay raises for teachers and other state employees to support teacher salaries and general public K-12 education funding. With $258 million set to expire from the federal Education Jobs Fund, which supports teacher salaries, legislators are working to find replacement state funds and lessen the cuts. The fiscal year 2013 budget contains $121.1 million for the state’s merit pay program. Lawmakers plan to move some of these funds into general funding for K-12 schools to partially replace the Education Jobs Funds. Republican lawmakers have not specified how much funding they will transfer to K-12 schools, and the North Carolina Appropriations Subcommittee on Education is preparing its budget (to be released next week) without the extra infusion of funds. More here…

Dispute over college tuition roils flagship Texas campus
This month, the Board of Regents for the University of Texas system rejected a proposed 2013 tuition increase for in-state students, instead raising tuition for out-of-state students by about 2 percent to more than $33,000. UT-Austin president William Powers Jr. originally proposed the 2.6 percent in-state tuition increase, which would have brought the total cost for those students to over $10,000 a year.  The board vote is in line with Governor Rick Perry’s stated goal of holding in-state tuition costs down to no more than $10,000 through budget cuts. Powers has stated that the school will continue to provide a high-quality education, in spite of the tuition freeze. More here…

Alabama education trust fund budget approved
Alabama lawmakers this week approved a fiscal year 2013 education budget totaling $5.4 billion and sent it to Governor Robert Bentley for his signature. The 2013 budget would cut spending by about $208 million from fiscal year 2012 levels and eliminate about 200 faculty and staff positions in K-12 schools due to an anticipated decline in enrollment. Legislators also made some structural reforms in which they moved funding for several youth programs to the general fund, rather than the education trust fund. Additionally, the budget reduces the total education trust fund by about $190 million in 2013 from fiscal year 2012 levels because a law passed last year requires legislators to move any excess reserves in the fund to a separate reserves account. Nearly 70 percent of the fiscal year 2013 education budget is targeted to K-12 education, while about 27 percent will go to higher education. More here…

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell vetoes $66 million from Alaska budget
This week, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell vetoed more than $66 million in spending from the state’s fiscal year 2013 budget plan.  The governor had previously vetoed far more spending – more than $300 million in fiscal year 2010 and more than $400 million in 2011. Parnell said that the limited cuts in the 2013 budget reflected the legislature’s commitment to holding spending within the governor’s stated spending cap.  The vetoes this year were targeted in part to early childhood education; he cut $1.2 million from the statewide pre-K program and $2.8 million from a parent training program called Parents as Teachers. Still, according to the governor, the state will spend 38 percent more on young children in 2013 than it did in 2012 – almost $14 million total, half of which will come through the Head Start program. More here…