You’ll find your fortune’s falling all over the town
Make sure that your umbrella is upside down…
— from the 1936 hit song, ‘Pennies from Heaven’ by John Burke & Arthur Johnston
Today’s lead article in the Daily Post, by Chalkbeat Colorado reporter Erica Meltzer, employs a question as its headline:
“Millions More for K-12 Schools?”
Ever since the Colorado voters approved the Taxpayers Bill of Rights in 1992 — the constitutional revision better known, perhaps, as the ‘TABOR Amendment’ — our state and local governments have been legally required to obtain voter approval for any tax increase or any new tax. That requirement has led elected leaders in all levels of government to seek clever ways to circumvent TABOR’s intended limits.
In her article this morning, Ms. Meltzer does a good job of explaining the maneuvers currently taking place in Denver, to increase local property taxes for schools without going to the voters. Those maneuvers might include a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court.
But it would appear that a veritable thundercloud of pennies is already making its way to schools all across America, as part of the $1.9 trillion ‘American Rescue Plan’ signed by President Biden on March 11. That package includes about $128 billion for K-12 education, along with other provisions that will also affect school spending.
According to another Chalkbeat article, by reporter Matt Barnum, American school districts can expect about 2.2 times as much federal aid as they received from the last federal rescue package. Historically federal aid to schools has been aimed at addressing poverty — and the educational challenges that typically go hand in hand with economic disadvantages. Here in Pagosa Springs, about half of our students come from families that qualify for Free & Reduced Lunches, the same measurement used for the allocation of Title I grants and other federal subsidies.
This intimate connection between Title I funding and Free & Reduced Lunches poses a problem for some school districts at the moment, because the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently providing free lunches to all students during the pandemic, regardless of their economic advantages or disadvantages — and this could cause some parents to skip the paperwork that ordinarily qualifies kids for reduced-price lunches — and ultimately, for Title I funding as well.
The average rescue funding per public school student will be around $2,500, but high-poverty districts will get several thousand dollars more per student. For instance, Los Angeles schools will be getting over $6,000 per student, according to an analysis by EdSource, while Chicago will receive perhaps $5,200 per student.
Schools will be able to use the money for cleaning supplies, technology, mental health services, summer or after-school programs, school building improvements that “reduce risk of virus transmission and exposure to environmental health hazards”, “other activities that are necessary to maintain the operation of and continuity of services … and continuing to employ existing staff”, and “activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth.”
How much is $128 billion in school funding, spread out over an entire nation? There are about 131,000 schools in the US, so an “average” school — pretending such a thing exists — might expect to receive about $1 million. (Archuleta County has four public schools, but I suspect they are all rather small compared to schools in big cities.)
According to Matt Barnum’s Chalkbeat analysis:
It is almost certainly the largest single federal outlay on K-12 education in U.S. history.
It’s nearly eight times what the federal government spends annually on the Title I program.
It’s more than twice what the federal government spends on education in a typical year.
It amounts to about 20% of all K-12 public operating spending in 2018, the most recent year with data available.
The three relief packages together add up to much more federal help than schools got during the Great Recession.
K-12 schools in Colorado are funded largely through incomes taxes collected by the state government, with a smaller amount coming from property taxes collected by individual school districts. Last October, the State Board of Education Thursday approved a 2021-22 budget proposal that included a cut of $29 million, in line with a request from the Office of State Planning and Budgeting that most state agencies reduce their budgets by 10%, in response to the state’s economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Colorado lawmakers got some good news last week from nonpartisan legislative economist Greg Sobetski. Colorado’s economy is recovering faster than expected, it seems, and the legislature might have $5.3 billion more than previously projected.
“The worst of the recession appears to be behind us,” Sobetski told the state budget committee. The improved outlook resulted from higher-than-expected tax collections… plus, about $4 billion slated to come directly to Colorad’s state government from the recently-signed American Rescue Plan.
“Oh my god! It’s a different world,” exclaimed Senator Bob Rankin, a Republican budget committee member. “A year ago today, people were crying over the loss of critical funding that took care of human beings. Today, it’s just a pleasure. We’re getting back to restoring those funds, and then adding a little bit. It’s not even the same world.”
There’ll be pennies from heaven for you and me…
The American Rescue Plan prohibits states from making deeper cuts to high-poverty school districts compared to other districts — to guard against what happened during the Great Recession, when high-poverty districts saw the deepest budget cuts. States can’t make any cuts at all, relative to 2019 funding, to its highest poverty districts.
States also cannot reduce the share of their budget devoted to education… unless they seek a waiver from the US Department of Education.
A separate allotment of rescue money has been earmarked to improve school district internet connections — in school buildings, and for families needing help with their home internet. The Biden administration has suggested schools use the new money to hire more teachers, to accommodate physically distanced classes… but since we’re approaching the tail end of the school year, and because hiring teachers is a time-consuming process. it’s unlikely we will see more hiring this school year.
In spite of all these heavenly pennies falling into upside-down educational umbrellas, the cost of catching kids back up to “grade level” expectations might be more than what’s been allocated thus far. Federal help in the “$2,500 per student” range might seem generous… but a January 2021 study by ER Strategies estimated the additional program costs generated by the COVID pandemic — to address academic and social-emotional learning — to cost more like $12,000 per student.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.