FORMULA FAVORS SCHOOLS WITH HIGH LEVIES

Missouri schools with high, local tax levies come out ahead under the state's new school funding formula; schools with a low, local effort don't fare as well.

Officials from public schools in Southeast Missouri met Tuesday in Cape Girardeau with three members of the state education finance department to discuss funding implications.

The meeting, which lasted five hours, dealt only with finances. Reforms and other components of the bill are still being analyzed by state experts.

Last month the General Assembly approved a new method to fund Missouri's public schools. Earlier, Circuit Court Judge Byron Kinder, responding to a lawsuit by public school districts, had ruled the state's funding formula unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to make it equitable and adequate.

"This is our best interpretation of how we're going to implement this," said assistant education commissioner Terry Stewart on Tuesday.

"I think this (formula) satisfies the court ruling," said Stewart. "It does have some implications for low tax rate districts.

"This is a tax-rate-driven formula," he said. "It is designed to increase local effort to match the increases in state funding."

The law includes penalties for districts that don't meet that local effort. If by 1997 a school district is unclassified because it does not meet the minimum tax rate, it has two years to bring the rate to $2.75 per $100 assessed valuation or the district will lapse.

Stewart said, "The tax rate will go to $2.75 one way or another, even if the school district is lapsed and they are attached to another district with a rate of $2.75."

Tom Waller, superintendent of Meadow Heights School, said, "We must ask voters (in Meadow Heights) to more than double their tax rate."

Meadow Heights levies $1.25, the lowest allowable tax rate. The board may vote to increase that tax rate to $2, the new minimum for the 1993-94 school year.

But for 1994-95, the minimum levy will be $2.75. Raising taxes in Meadow Heights to that level requires voter approval.

"The question is not do they want a $2.75 tax rate," Waller said, "but if they want Meadow Heights to continue."

Jackson Superintendent Wayne Maupin believes his district will come out ahead under the new formula. But he, like many others, is not sure by how much.

"We are going to take all this back and try to decipher it. I'm overwhelmed with the information I've received today," he said.

Cape Girardeau School District business manager Larry Dew said following the meeting, "I just have more questions."

Cape Girardeau has a tax levy well above the $2.75 and expects to be a winner in the scenario. How much the district will receive is still in question.

"It's a tax-rate-driven formula designed to increase local effort," Dew said. "Districts can't get by with $1.25 any more."

Dew said, all in all, the formula seems to be a good one.

"It's going to take four years to find out what the real impact will be," Dew said. "But when you look at Kansas and Texas, where school districts are sending money back to the state, I think this is very conservative."

Early in the process a California consultant said Missouri would need $800 million to $1 billion to fix the funding flaws. "This fixes it with $390 million," Dew said.

Scott County Central Superintendent Ray Shoaf doesn't agree that the formula is fixed. "I think I have all the information I need to go to court or back to the legislature for a change," Shoaf said following the meeting.

"We're going with a $2 minimum and an additional $86 million next year, and the legislature calls that adequacy," he said.

Scott County Central levies a tax of $2.13. The local tax must increase 62 cents by 1994-95 to reach the minimum $2.75 tax.

His district is classified "hold harmless." In other words, Scott County Central will get no new state money through the revised formula.

But the new legislation makes some changes in how money must be spent.

"They earmark 1 percent for professional (staff) development and another large amount of money for at-risk students."

Shoaf said the funding for at-risk programs in his district will be over $100,000.

"And then they allow me to send railroad and utility taxes to Jefferson City. For us, that's about $60,000, and I'm supposed to smile.

"This did not help outstate, poor school districts that were meant to benefit from the changes," he said.

Shoaf said school officials will meet Friday with lawyers to discuss possible new litigation.

"I would say we probably have more supporters right now than we had with the first lawsuit."

Bob Brison, retiring superintendent at Scott City schools, said, "They used a very complicated and confusing way of shifting the burden from a state responsibility to a local responsibility.

"I don't think anyone here is quite sure if they are a winning school or a losing school," he said. "The best we have is a sophisticated guess.

"This is the budgeting season," he said. "We are supposed to have a budget in place by July 1. It won't be very easy this year."