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1/11/12
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The Incredible Shrinking State Dollars for K-12 Sc…
State funding for California’s K-12 public schools has fallen by $7 billion since the onset of the recession. The state now spends $1,000 less per student than it did in 2007-2008. “There has been a very large reduction in revenues that determine Prop 98, California's formula for calculating minimum school funding,” said Jonathan Kaplan, senior policy analyst with the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan group that monitors fiscal and policy issues. Per student spending is now close to the 1989-90 level, after adjusting for inflation. “We are basically at a similar level of funding than we were at 20 years ago,” Kaplan said. Prop 98, or the Classroom Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act, was passed by voters in 1988. It requires the state to spend a minimum percentage of its budget on K-12 and community college education. It is by far the largest source of dollars schools receive. In good times, the Act provided ever-increasing funds that grew each year with the economy and number of students. But with the rapid drop in tax revenues following the onset of the recession, funding on K-12 plummeted from $50.3 billion in the 2007-2008 school year to $43 billion in 2008-2009, where it has remained static. Schools See a 6 Percent Reduction Per StudentLocal school districts have offset the deep cuts in state funding through a mix of strategies, from tapping to one-time only federal stimulus dollars to deferring unpaid programs to the following year’s budget, a practice known as deferral. The state began significantly relying on deferrals in 2008-09, when the state delayed $3 billion in payments to the next fiscal year to balance the...
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