LITTLE ROCK — Legislators said Wednesday that they see no reason to change school funding in Arkansas, at least not right now.
The House and Senate Education Committees took no action to update the 2008 "adequacy report," which defines how much money the state should send to public schools to meet state Supreme Court requirements.
Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, the House committee chairman, said afterward that people shouldn't assume the Legislature will leave everything the same with school funding in the 2010 legislative session, which starts in February.
"We'll be having hearings in the fall," Abernathy said. "We hope to have all of our recommendations in December, but it might [come] in January when we get all the numbers."
Act 199 of 2009 requires that the education committees come up with recommendations to updatethe previous adequacy report if they find before Sept. 1 that changes are needed. But it doesn't prevent legislators from making additional recommendations later.
"That date is kind of unrealistic," Abernathy said of the Sept. 1 deadline.
Of the $2.7 billion in state and local dollars necessary for per-student "foundation funding" for an adequate education in fiscal 2010, about $940 million will come from locally collected property taxes. Twenty-five mills of property tax in each school district is required by Amendment 74 of the state constitution for the maintenance and operation of schools.
That leaves about $1.8 billion for the state to come up with from general revenue, which is derived largely from income and sales taxes.
Based on Gov. Mike Beebe's recommendation, the Legislature increased foundation and "enhanced" funding by 1.1 percent from fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2010, raising it from $5,876 to $5,940 per student.
Education groups said during the 2009 session that they were resigned to receive such a small increase because of declining state revenue due to the economy.
There are about 460,000 students in Arkansas public schools.
Tom Kimbrell, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said he plans to present his case to legislators about the need for more money for schools for fiscal 2011. He said his group hasn't finished figuring out how much.
Jodie Mahony, a House aide and former legislator, said it's possible an evaluation could show that some school expenses declined because of the economy, which would allow a reduction of state funding, in at least some education categories.
Mahony said the only reason that a Sept. 1 deadline is in Act 199 is because that's the deadline in another law, passed during the 2003-2004 education special session, that requires an adequacy study every two years before a regular session.
The 2008 adequacy study wasn't finished until December of that year.
"Probably Sept. 1 is too early," Mahony said, noting that national data comparing teacher salaries don't come in until later in the fall.
Abernathy said the deadline probably should be changed in law.
When voters last year adopted Amendment 86 requiring annual sessions, legislators were unsure about whether to require a fullfledged adequacy study each year.
Mahony said they determined that every two years would suffice because the state Supreme Court has already signed off on that process.
In 2007, after several years of litigation and legislative changes, the Supreme Court declared the state's educational system to be constitutionally adequate and equitable.
More detailed adequacy hearings will happen after the 2010 session in advance of the 2011session.
Richard Wilson, assistant director of the Bureau of Legislative Research, said his staff will start gathering data this fall from the state's 244 school districts. He said they will visit 74 of the state's 1,100 schools. He said the schools visited will be a representative sample of schools throughout the state.
Some of the data will be available starting in February, he said.
Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant, a major player in schoolfunding changes for the last decade, told the committee that he and Abernathy won't be back for the 2011 session because of term limits. He suggested that legislative staff members produce a history of school funding to better educate legislators inexperienced in the subject.
"What [legislators] do in the future is up to them," Broadway said. "They may want to do something totally different. That's their call and their rear if they've got to go to court."
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 08/27/2009