Education Budget Developments

The latest set of line item numbers being used in the education budget negotiations surfaced last night at the Education Appropriations conferees committee. The conferees are working from new budget targets that assumes a revenue package in the $900 million to a billion range will be agreed upon by the two chambers.

The new education budget is still a work in progress and based on the sheets from last night, some additional cutting of around $100 million may be in order, depending on how large the revenue package being negotiated by the Finance Committee conferees becomes. Some or all of that money could also come from cuts made in either the Senate or the House budget but which have been left on the table for now by the conferees.

For instance, for the K-12 budget, the House proposed cutting 45 DPI positions in 2009-10 (a 10% reduction) and a further 35 in 2010-2011 (15% in total). The Senate cut was sizeably larger, mind-boggling really – 300 total jobs by 2010-2011 or 66% of the state-funded DPI workforce. Those cuts beggar belief and bring to mind John McEnroe, “You can’t be serious!” Negotiations on the gulf between the two proposals obviously continue.

Also left on the table: the House plan to charge resident university tuition to out of state athletes (saving almost $14 million but flying in the face of powerful lobbies), and an increase in tuition of $200 a year ($34 million).

With those things in mind, what’s new that we didn’t know before?

The biggest news in the pre-K – 12 conferees budget is that More at Four looks set to get a bigger reduction in funding than in the House budget – $15 million in 2009-2010 and $30 million in 2010-2011 versus the $10 million for both years in the House budget.

Notwithstanding statements from legislators that these cuts could be absorbed via greater administrative efficiencies, it is hard to see how these cuts will not affect the number of slots the nationally lauded program will be able to offer to children from low-income families over the next two years. If you add-in the lottery revenue More at Four gets, the cut to the program’s total budget for 2009-10 comes in under 10%, and around 18% for 2010-11. Quick math suggests that the proposed cuts will cause a reduction of 2800 slots in 2009-2010 (around 200 classrooms) and around 5600 slots in 2010-11, or around 400 classrooms.

Another Governor Easley initiative, the Learn and Earn program that enables students to get community college credits in high school, was also re-visited. The cuts from the Senate budget – $3.6 million each year and absent in the House budget – re-appeared in the conferees draft.

The Public School Forum was put on notice last night. That state-sponsored organization gets $2.3 million a year, runs events and education innovation programs and publishes many education-related reports, including the widely-read and cited K-12 school finance report every year. Its funding was placed on a non-recurring basis by conferees starting 2010-2011.

The K-12 winners (although its hard to call them winners when everyone is getting a budget trim) were support personnel ($10+ million restored for each year) and transportation ($15 million restored for each year). That will provide some relief for teachers from increased administrative duties and mean that children may get to see the inside of one of their school district’s activities bus over the next two years.

The class size restoration for K-3 from the House budget remains intact, while average class size in grades 4 through 12 will increase by two in 2009-2010 and three in 2010-2011.

The Community College budget got some relatively minor tweaks – a smaller management flexibility cut here, a restoration of money for a lab there, among other small changes.

The University system fared best of all – not surprising given the Senate’s recent budget record on the UNC system. The biggest win: $37 million of management flexibility cuts for 2010-2011 were restored. Several smaller cuts to schools and colleges were juggled, moved and adjusted, while the systematic cuts to ECU, NCSU and UNC Centers and Institutes were aggregated. Each institution will have to make their own decision as to the distribution of those cuts.