In Arizona, budget cuts to K-12 education last year eliminated state funding for full-day kindergarten and reduced money for textbooks, technology and other teaching tools.
Florida voters in November rejected a ballot measure that would have relaxed constitutionally mandated class sizes as a way to ease the strain of cutting education funding.
And in North Carolina, there’s a one-year moratorium on replacing school buses, among many other education cuts.
Despite Gov. John Hickenlooper’s proposing a $332 million net reduction next year in total spending for public schools — the largest-ever cut to districts in dollar terms — when it comes to deep cuts to K-12 spending, Colorado is not alone. Not even close.
“It’s bad all over,” said Mike Griffith, senior policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based organization that advises states on education policy.
“You have a handful of states like Wyoming — well, really, only Wyoming — that is doing OK,” Griffith said. “They’re not increasing their budget, but at least they’re not making cuts.”
According to officials at Education Sector, a nonpartisan education policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., 44 states and the District of Columbia project an aggregate shortfall of $125 billion for the 2011-12 fiscal year that begins in July.
Revenue falls, costs climb
The reasons are pretty much the same in every state: Flagging tax revenues combined with the loss of temporary federal stimulus dollars and ever-increasing costs for education have resulted in 2011-12 being the “cliff” year for many states.
“While state revenues are starting to pick up, the growth is unlikely to be sufficient to replace expiring American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds or cover projected increases in program areas such as Medicaid and K-12 education,” according to a December analysis of states’ budget troubles released by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“This means another round of budget gaps, certainly in FY 2012, but even beyond in many states,” the report said. “States will have $37.9 billion less in federal stimulus funds in FY 2012 than they had in FY 2011, according to figures provided by Federal Funds Information for States. This will create big holes in state budgets — what many officials are calling the ‘ARRA cliff.’ “
Colorado’s $1.1 billion budget shortfall is about 15.5 percent of the 2011-12 general fund. That’s a big shortfall, but a number of other states are seeing worse dips this year or just came out of years with bigger shortfalls.
In Texas, where total state spending is falling by $30 billion, or 17 percent, the state will be spending $9.8 billion less on education than called for in its school funding formula.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott is cutting per-pupil funding by about 10 percent, and in New York, new Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing a 7.3 percent cut to education.
Throughout the recession, education spending in Colorado was largely spared until the 2009-10 fiscal year, when a $130 million cut was enacted. The next year, though, the current 2010-11 budget year, the state imposed a $260 million net reduction to schools. Now, Hickenlooper is proposing an even larger cut.
“Colorado was held a little more harmless in K-12 funding” during the recession than other states, Griffith said, “but there’s just nowhere else to turn now. This year’s cut is pretty big.”
Up until the “cliff” year, states had tried to cut things like after-school programs and extracurricular activities, experts said. Sometimes, programs like art or music were hit too.
“Now that those are all cut, people are going to start seeing things like increases in class size,” Griffith said.
Proposals go beyond money
But the states’ financial woes are also forcing elected officials to consider fundamental reforms of education, if not government itself, experts said.
“What I see happening across the country is governors using the budget issues to make not just spending but policy changes,” said Richard Lee Colvin, executive director of Education Sector.
In Wisconsin, thousands of demonstrators last week were protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s plans to remedy a state shortfall in part by requiring state workers and teachers to pay more for their pensions and health care and gut collective-bargaining rights.
In New Jersey, education cuts are being tied to cutting tenure for teachers, Colvin said, and other states are considering replicas of Colorado’s Senate Bill 191, a law passed last year that ties teacher evaluations more closely to students’ academic performance, making it easier for teachers to lose tenure.
“We’re at a time when more than ever before, we have a president who is linking education quality to the long-term fix for our economy,” Colvin said. “We just have unprecedented attention being paid to education policy-wise at the same time we are making cuts that are going to be very difficult for school districts to handle.
“The cuts are so severe they’re leading to some changes in structure and policy that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred.”
Griffith agreed, saying there has been more discussion than ever at the state level about changes to teacher pensions and health care plans. There’s also more talk about changing rules that require newer teachers to be laid off first, regardless of performance, he said.
“Because teacher salaries and benefits make up 65 percent of total education spending, it’s tough to make large cuts without impacting teacher salaries and benefits one way or the other,” he said. “Some of this stuff had been talked about for years, but a lot of it is moving forward because of the down times in the budget.”
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
