InformED Report 11/23/16
The edition covers Mississippi teachers pressing for full funding of the state formula and a North Carolina study that faulted its own school finance system.
Mississippi teachers say the formula needs funding, not a rewrite, and North Carolina's own study calls its system too complex and uneven.
The InformED Report for November 23, 2016 was about money. In Mississippi, teachers and parents told lawmakers that the state’s school funding formula worked well enough and that the real problem was that the Legislature had rarely paid for it in full. In North Carolina, a legislative study found the state’s own system too complex and tilted toward wealthier counties. The edition then looked at other routes to school funding: a Connecticut poll, an Oregon ballot measure, and a local bank paying for a high school robotics team in New York.
In this edition
- Mississippi’s school funding formula had been fully funded only twice since it was fully enacted in 2003.
- A North Carolina study found the state’s 37-allotment funding system too complex, short on transparency and at times favoring wealthier counties.
- Most Connecticut voters polled said the state should not wait for the courts to fix school funding.
- Oregon voters rejected Measure 97, a corporate tax meant partly for schools.
- Ballston Spa National Bank gave $6,000 to a New York high school robotics team.
Mississippi teachers fight for full funding
The Mississippi Adequate Education Program, known as MAEP, is the formula lawmakers passed in 1997 to send state money to local school districts. WLOX’s Doug Walker spoke with science teachers at a conference in Biloxi, worried by a push to rewrite the law. Emanuel Posey said the state’s students needed full funding “to compete and be successful with other countries,” and to use classroom technology as intended. Another teacher, Mena Burnett, said she found it curious that the formula was law yet had gone unfollowed for so long.
At a public hearing on the possible rewrite, most speakers made the same point. Bobby Harrison of the Daily Journal reported that MAEP had been fully funded only twice since it was fully enacted in 2003, and had been underfunded by about $1.8 million since 2008, as the paper reported it. Lauren Stubblefield, a public school parent from Utica, said the answer was “for the Legislature to do its lawful job and fund the formula.” In The Sun Herald, Jeff Amy reported that the formula divides $2.2 billion among schools. Several speakers were hostile to Republican plans to change it, and Jeremy Eisler of the Mississippi Center for Justice said that without a commitment to funding, “any formula is no more than public relations.”
For district leaders in Mississippi, the hearings framed the debate a particular way. A new formula would matter less than whether the state paid what any formula promised, and budgets built on the formula’s numbers would keep falling short until it did.
North Carolina’s funding formula under review
North Carolina’s General Assembly received a report from its nonpartisan Program Evaluation Division on how the state pays for K-12 schools. The state distributes operating money through 37 separate allotments, for classroom teachers, textbooks, administration, transportation and more. In 2014-15, the Department of Public Instruction sent $8.4 billion through that system to local districts and charter schools. The division found problems with individual allotments, a lack of rationale for some of the factors used, and weaknesses in the system as a whole caused by its complexity. It gave lawmakers two options: move to a weighted student funding model built on individual students, or repair the current allotments and improve transparency and accountability.
Bill Ball of The Progressive Pulse described the report as a call for a massive revamp. WRAL’s Kelly Hinchcliffe reported that the study found the model at times favored wealthier counties, and that committee co-chair Sen. Fletcher Hartsell called it the “lengthiest and most detailed study” the committee had done on K-12 funding. Sen. Tom McInnis praised it as a “fabulous piece of work” that confirmed what many rural North Carolinians had believed for years. For superintendents, especially in rural districts, the choice between a full overhaul and targeted repairs would decide how predictable their state money would be for years.
Connecticut voters on school funding
In Connecticut, a state judge had ruled in September that the way the state funded schools was badly inadequate, and the state was appealing. The CT Post’s Linda Conner Lambeck reported on an October telephone poll of 600 people who voted in the last governor’s race. Most did not know the case, but after a short description, 68 percent supported the ruling and 57 percent said the General Assembly should act now on a plan. Another 36 percent were willing to wait for the appeal. A poll of 600 voters is a snapshot of opinion, not a mandate, but it suggested that lawmakers would have public room to move before the courts finished.
Oregon’s Measure 97 defeated
The Oregonian’s Hillary Borrud reported that Measure 97, a $3 billion corporate tax initiative, was losing 58 percent to 42 percent on election night. It would have taxed certain corporations 2.5 percent on Oregon sales above $25 million, with the money going to education, health care and senior services. The campaign broke the state’s spending record for a ballot measure. Ben Unger of Our Oregon, which backed it, said “the details weren’t right.” Even in defeat, the vote showed that school funding could go directly to voters when legislatures did not act.
A bank pays for a robotics team
The Times Union reported that Ballston Spa National Bank again gave $6,000 to the Ballston Spa Central School District in New York for its high school robotics team to compete in the FIRST Robotics competition. Combined with other sponsors and team fundraising, the gift paid for building a robot, entering regional events and expanding robotics to more students. Sponsorships like this can keep a program going, but they depend on local businesses, and districts without such partners do not get the same programs.
Sources
- Doug Walker, “Concern over education funding growing among MS teachers,” WLOX, October 2016.
- Bobby Harrison, “Many say funding, not formula is problem with schools,” Daily Journal (DJournal.com), 2016.
- Jeff Amy, “At Mississippi school funding hearing, many say spend more,” The Sun Herald, 2016.
- North Carolina General Assembly, Program Evaluation Division, “Allotment-Specific and System-Level Issues Adversely Affect North Carolina’s Distribution of K-12 Resources,” November 2016.
- Bill Ball, “New state report: Myriad flaws, inequities in North Carolina’s system of funding schools,” The Progressive Pulse, November 16, 2016.
- Kelly Hinchcliffe, “Study: NC school funding formula lacks transparency, favors wealthier counties,” WRAL, November 16, 2016.
- Linda Conner Lambeck, “Poll: most say don’t wait for courts to fix school funding,” CT Post, 2016.
- Hillary Borrud, “Oregon corporate tax Measure 97 defeated: Election 2016 Results,” The Oregonian, November 8, 2016.
- Wendy Liberatore, “Ballston Spa National Bank donates $6,000 to the high school robotics team,” Times Union, 2016.
About the InformED Report
The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on November 23, 2016. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.
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