Speed Gibson

As I illustrated with five posts last month, Minnesota's K-12 funding formulas are a mess, to the point where even the Legislature's own financial staffers can follow the math.

The P. S. Minnesota organization wants to reform such funding. Openly, they admit they want another $2 billion added to the State budget for our public schools. And, they want funding to be "reliable" which seems to be a code word for "automatic" and "unquestioned". Here are their nine guidelines for a new set of formulas:

1. It should be targeted toward student achievement of local, state, and national standards.
   
   
2. It should account for differences in district property wealth through a system of equalization. Said system should be based on an accurate economic representation of the use of a given property coupled with a sensitivity toward the income produced by that property or, in the case of a residence, the income of that property owner.
   
   
3. It should account for differences in individual students such as family wealth, family language, and special needs.
   
   
4. It should account for the unique characteristics of individual districts such as cost variances due to factors like geographic remoteness, declining enrollment, and market-based labor cost differentials.
   
   
5. It should provide for limited local discretion by both the local school board and by district voters to account for marketplace competition and community expectations.
   
   
6. It should target resources into capital-intensive obligations such as textbooks and non-technology instructional resources, student and system technologies, annual and deferred maintenance expenses, and transportation system operations.
   
   
7. It should offer equalized access to the acquisition of new and/or remodeled school facilities while also providing incentives for collaboration and sharing of resources when possible.
   
   
8. Both base costs and adjustments should be adequate and established in accordance with research-based methodologies which calculate the real costs associated with meeting state and federal standards. Such a system should significantly reduce the need for school districts to rely on operating referenda to support to support basic instructional costs.
   
   
9. A new general education levy, equalized with state and local resources, should be used to adequately fund the base costs in the new formula.
   

Tenets 1 through 7 are essentially met today by the current system. Points 8 and 9 is where the money is, that we simply tally what is spent and invoice the state for those "real costs" not covered by property taxes or the infamous mandates. There isn't a word about innovation or efficiency, and no real commitment to success. We will only target resources toward that end.

I agree with some of this, starting with the role of property taxes in funding public education. (The voucher debate is out of scope for now.) I could see property taxes for school facilities, specifically the land and buildings, and related costs like custodians. I could see parents directly responsible for transportation and meals, and some activity participation fees. I would welcome the end of all federal education funding but regardless, the rest should yes, be funded by the State.

The larger point I'd make is that we probably had some goals like this once upon a time and we still wound up with the convoluted system we have now. The P. S. Minnesota folks (largely insiders) are dreaming if they think guidelines or research will keep the Legislature from tinkering with formulas for political ends each and every session.