Senate pulls marathon debate on school funds

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- When lawmakers began tackling the thorny issue of overhauling Missouri's system for distributing public funds earlier this year, Senate President Pro Tem Michael Gibbons feared the effort inevitably would deteriorate into "the legislative equivalent of a food fight." To his pleasant surprise that hasn't happened.

As the Senate started debating legislation on Tuesday to rewrite the state's education funding formula, however, civil differences of opinion, most based on parochial concerns, emerged on how to best provide for Missouri's students and ensure funding equity for all school districts.

As of 10:30 p.m., the Senate had spent about 7 1/2 hours working on the bill, with debate expected to continue past midnight. The situation, however, couldn't be characterized as a filibuster. The bill's sponsor, Senate Majority Floor Leader Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, said no senators are trying to stall the measure but that many want changes to protect their constituent school districts' interests. Shields said he has sufficient support for passage.

The current formula, which resulted from the 1993 Outstanding School Act, is driven by local property tax levies. To account for massive disparities in local property values, the formula aims to ensure that districts with the same levy receive the same amount of funding from combined state and local sources per penny of tax. In general, the formula rewards districts for setting higher local levies.

"I would argue that formula is not based on the characteristics of students in a district but the characteristics of taxpayers in a district," Shields said.

$682 million

The proposed formula aims to distribute funding on the basis on what it takes to adequately educate students in a given district. To reach full funding, the state would have to allocate an additional $682 million for education. The new money would be phased in over five years.

To the achieve bill's goals, its drafters essentially used an average of per-pupil spending by the 111 districts that earned perfect scores on their last state performance evaluations to establish a base. The new formula would allocate extra money to districts with high numbers of low-income, disabled and non-native English-speaking students -- groups that are more expensive to educate.

The bill would establish a minimum funding level of $6,117 per student, although many districts would still spend more when local taxes are taken into account. Under the current formula, per-pupil spending ranges from $4,771 to $13,379. There is nearly uniform agreement that the existing formula is unconstitutional because of inequities in the system.

None would lose money

All but 41 of the state's 524 public school districts would receive additional state aid under the bill compared to what they are getting this year. None would lose any money.

However, a competing analysis shows that by putting the same amount of additional money called for by the bill into the existing formula, many school districts, particularly those with higher tax levies, would get more state funding than under the new formula. State Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, said comparing how districts would fare under the two formulas provides a more accurate view of the bill's impact.

"The net effect is we are moving money from higher-levy districts to lower-levy districts," Bartle said.

Shields said the analysis cited by Bartle is flawed in that it fails to take into account the levy-driven nature of the existing formula. Since the additional money is being phased in over five years, many of the assumptions on which the analysis is based would be outdated by that time, he said.

One new feature of the bill not present in current law would give extra money to districts in counties where wages exceed the statewide average. The primary beneficiaries of that provision are in urban and suburban areas.

The bill establishes a dollar value modifier based on wages in a given county that can increase how much a district receives. A factor of 1.0 is set as the floor to ensure that districts in counties where the modifier would be below that amount won't lose money.

Most Southeast Missouri counties would have the base factor. The exceptions are Cape Girardeau, 1.031; Ste. Genevieve, 1.023; Butler, 1.021; Scott, 1.009; and St. Francois, 1.004.

Originally, the bill would have capped the modifier at 1.10. However, Gibbons successfully attached an amendment removing the cap. Gibbons said it was fairer to districts in high-cost regions. The amendment wouldn't shift money from other districts but adds $18 million to the bill's price tag.

Another key amendment would funnel more money to small rural districts. Of the 41 districts that would receive no funding increase from the new formula, all but one have enrollments of fewer than 200 students.

Shields attempted to provide some relief by setting aside $5 million for grants to districts with 500 or fewer students. An amendment by state Sen. David Klindt, R-Bethany, doubled that amount.

While acknowledging that some geographically isolated districts are small by necessity, state Sen. Tim Green, D-St. Louis, noted that others easily could merge with nearby districts and ought to be urged to do so.

"We can't keep subsidizing these small schools without talking about consolidation," Green said. "It's inevitable. There's not enough money to go around."

The bill is SB 287.

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