May revise, Part 3: Educated Guess on the "good news" for K-12 ...

May 15, 2012: John Fensterwald, writing in Educated Guess on Thoughts on Public Education, analyzes the numbers, the policy, and the implications of the "no cuts in K-12 is good news" component of yesterday's released 2012-13 revised CA state budget.

An excerpt:

... Gov. Jerry Brown is not proposing to cut money for K-12?schools ? immediately. But?if voters in November reject Brown?s proposed $8.5 billion tax increase, schools will be a $5.5 billion piece of what the governor has called ?a day of reckoning.?

...Brown ...could have cut Proposition 98 funding for this year by nearly $800 million. But that would have been impractical this far into the year, so instead he is proposing to redesignate the overappropriation as a prepayment toward settling up a debt to schools under an agreement that Gov. Schwarzenegger made with the California Teachers Assn.

One of the quirks of Proposition 98?s funding formula is that the spending commitment to schools can rise even as overall revenues fall. And that is what will happen in the 2012-13 budget. Having fallen substantially in 2011-12, the increase in revenues projected for next year creates a $1.2 billion extra for K-12. But districts shouldn?t count on any of that money coming their way. Brown wants to use $393 million to add to a $2.2 billion fund to pay down the current $9.6 billion in deferrals ? late payments to school districts that are part of Brown?s wall of debt. And he wants to count a $450 million payment to low-performing schools under the Quality Education Investment Act as part of Proposition 98 (it had been paid outside of Prop 98 in other years). Add in a few more adjustments, and, poof!, the money is gone.

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