Mo. budget shortfall could prompt school cuts

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri's public schools may be forced to freeze salaries, expand classes, cut extracurricular activities or seek local tax increases to cope with a funding shortfall, education advocates warned Thursday.

K-12 schools -- though spared from cuts in their basic state aid -- still might have to scale back because of Gov. Jay Nixon's plan to provide barely one-sixth of the funding increase needed to meet the state's financing formula, said Brent Ghan, a spokesman for the Missouri School Boards' Association.

"This is a pretty dramatic shortfall," said Ghan. "The funding situation from the state is going to have an impact on schools statewide -- there's no doubt about it."

Until now, Missouri's 523 public school districts have weathered the state budget woes remarkably well -- continuing to get the funding increases prescribed under a 2005 state law that was projected to add $800 million annually to schools when fully phased in over seven years.

But Nixon's budget office confirmed Wednesday that schools would not get the $43 million midyear increase called for under the school funding formula for the 2009-2010 academic year.

For the 2010-2011 school year, Nixon recommended an $18 million increase to the $3 billion in basic school aid that Missouri provides to schools. But that's far shy of the nearly $106 million boost called for under the funding formula.

Nixon didn't mention that shortfall in his State of the State address Wednesday, instead highlighting that schools still would get a record amount of money under his proposal.

Ghan said many school officials were expecting the state to fall short of its funding targets for next year, but the size of Nixon's proposed gap was a bit of a surprise.

Ghan said the schools were considering a number of cost-cutting options, including:

* Abandoning extracurricular activities or charging students a participation fee;

* Raising admission prices to school sporting events;

* Eliminating field trips;

* Switching to a four-day school week;

* Freezing teacher and staff salaries or leaving vacancies open.

"Superintendents and boards are trying their best to look at things that don't affect classroom instruction, but you get to a point when you can't avoid that," Ghan said.

If schools save money by not filling vacant teacher positions, "it also affects the learning conditions for kids, because it means they're in bigger classes," said Otto Fajen, a lobbyist for the Missouri National Education Association, which represents teachers.

Senate President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, who spearheaded the 2005 school funding revision, raised concerns Thursday that Missouri could open itself to a legal challenge if it fails to fund the full amount called for by the formula.

The 2005 law contains no provision for prorating the money due schools when funding falls short, Shields said.

The Missouri Supreme Court upheld Missouri's school-funding formula in September against a challenge from school districts that claimed it failed to provide enough money and distributed state aid inequitably.