Friday News Roundup: Week of July 25-29
Blog Post
July 28, 2011
Colorado governor, attorney general stand against education-funding challenge
Lack of pay for Illinois regional superintendents threatens start of school
Florida charters get $55 million for upkeep, other schools get zero
UC budget lacks transparency, state audit says
Colorado governor, attorney general stand against education-funding challenge
A trial challenging Colorado’s education funding formula as falling short of the state’s constitutional requirement that funding be “thorough and uniform” is scheduled to start next week. The lawsuit, Lobato v. State of Colorado, was filed in 2005 by parents around the state and by school districts in the San Luis Valley. Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper and Republican Attorney General John Suthers have already made clear to the public that the case could cost the state billions of dollars it doesn’t have, should the Attorney General lose the case. The governor also said that it was legislators’ responsibility as elected officials, rather than the purview of court mandates, to determine funding for K-12 education. More here…
Lack of pay for Illinois regional superintendents threatens start of school
When Illinois Governor Pat Quinn used his veto power to cancel $11 million in funding intended for the work of the state’s 44 regional superintendents in the fiscal year 2012 budget, he intended for local communities to step up and provide the money. No action has yet been taken at the local level, meaning that superintendents have been working without pay since July 1. Among other tasks, superintendents are responsible for signing off on occupancy permits for new school facilities, new teacher certification, and new bus driver training. So schools with new buildings, teachers, and bus drivers could be forced to delay the start of the school year until these problems are resolved. A meeting of the superintendents, scheduled for August 3rd, could yield a solution. In the meantime, the State Board of Education has said it does not have the capacity to take on the additional work from the superintendents’ offices. The state legislature, not scheduled to return to session until late October, cannot reinsert funding for the superintendents before the start of the school year, though lawmakers have been debating how to find the money to refund the offices. More here…
Florida charters get $55 million for upkeep, other schools get zero
The Florida legislature provided $55 million in fiscal year 2012 for the construction and maintenance of school facilities. All of that money was directed to Florida’s 350 charter schools, while the nearly 3,000 traditional public schools will receive no funding for maintenance or construction. State Senator David Simmons, Republican chair of the Senate’s Budget Subcommittee on Education Pre-K - 12 Appropriations, said that the Subcommittee decided to direct funding to charter schools because traditional public schools simply didn’t need the funds after substantial amounts of construction several years ago. Charter schools, on the other hand, are experiencing significant growth, and therefore need the funds. School officials for traditional public schools countered that they still needed funding through the Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO) program to keep up with maintenance needs. More here…
UC budget lacks transparency, state audit says
California state auditors released a report this week that claims that the University of California system lacked transparency in its finances over the 2005-2010 period of the study. The auditors cited variations in per-student expenditures across its campuses – at four of ten campuses, the college spends thousands more per student – and more than $1 billion per year allocated to “miscellaneous services,” with no further explanation, as examples of obscured budgeting practices. Some of the audit’s findings echoed concerns that students and faculty have expressed for years, and critics of the UC system have hailed the report for providing more information to the public. The auditors recommend introducing more openness to the public during the budgeting process as a way to help maintain the public trust in the publicly-funded school system. More here…