School funding remains one of life’s mysteries

06/13/2005

Norman Draper,
Star Tribune
June 14, 2005

Who can make sense of a James Joyce novel?

Can anyone truly know what makes teenagers tick?

And does any normal person understand how schools handle money?

Two years ago, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he wanted to reform Minnesota education spending so you wouldn’t need a Ph.D. to understand it. Guess what? You’d still need that Ph.D.

As legislators fuss, finagle and fulminate over where all the money’s going to come from for schools this year, it’s plain that simplifying school funding is low on the agenda.

In a year in which amounts of funding and where that money comes from are the big issues, making school funding easier to understand has taken a back seat.

No proposals. No hearings. Not even any legislative hand-wringing on how tough it is to understand. An education task force to reform education and make it more basic fizzled out last year.

Still, said Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung, “simplifying the K-12 funding formula remains an interest of his,” and Pawlenty feels “it’s still one of the most mystifying parts of state government.”

“Right now, I’d say most people in the state are thinking ‘more’ instead of promoting clarity,” said Joe Nathan, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for School Change.

But what about a simple reckoning of what schools have taken in and spent over a year?

“The typical superintendent and teacher and parent ... should be able to look and see how much money a district is getting ... in a pretty understandable way,” said Minnesota Education Commissioner Alice Seagren.

So is that happening?

“I don’t think so,” she said.

Simply complicated

There is a relatively simple part to it. For instance, $4,601 in state funding now travels with every student to every public school in the state. But hold on.

“Even that’s pretty complicated,” cautioned Tom Melcher, director of the program finance division with the Minnesota Department of Education. “There are complicated pupil weightings, marginal cost pupil units, the weighting of the prior and current year accounts, and pension adjustments where we don’t pay the full general education formula to school districts; we make subtractions based on the amount school districts saved in 1997 as a result of the employer contribution rates for the Teacher Retirement Association and the Public Employee Retirement Association.”

That’s as plain as he can make it.

Beyond the basic formula lie even deeper mysteries. Spreadsheets with hundreds of lines of spending categories crowd the desks of senators and representatives. They must navigate through a thicket of safe-schools levies, transportation sparsity allowances, property tax recognition shifts, tax base replacement aids, debt service equalization aids and consolidation transition revenues.

“I think there has to be a better way,” said Rep. Barb Sykora, R-Excelsior, and co-chair of the committee of senators and representatives grappling with education funding issues in the special session. “But at this point, we haven’t found it.”

Much of the complexity of education funding has to do with different needs of school districts. Don’t districts that have more poor kids than others deserve more money to help educate them? There’s a formula. How about schools that have to bus kids over many miles? There’s another formula.

“I find it analogous to cars,” said Mary Cecconi, state director of the Parents United Network and someone who actually claims to understand school funding. “My husband used to be able to fix an automobile 30 years ago without too much difficulty. Now, he could barely open the hood. Why is that? It’s because people want more. ... All those demands create a more complex automobile. ... I think it’s wrong to move toward simplicity.”

Simplifying reports

Reports on what schools spend and take in can be just as obtuse. According to Tom Berge, director of finance and operations for the Minnetonka School District, there are 35,000 categories of expenses the state requires schools to track. How do you boil this down into something easily digestible? Many schools don’t.

A committee of west suburban school finance directors and business people recently came up with a model that many school officials and some legislators think holds promise. It divvies up school funding by easy-to-understand categories, such as “supplies,"textbooks and library books,"professional teaching personnel,” and “equipment and facilities maintenance.” According to Berge and Golden Valley businessman Ward Eames, who were instrumental in coming up with it, their model is in big demand among school districts statewide.

“I am aiming at everybody associated with schools, an employee of the school, a union member ... teachers, parents and the community at large,” Eames said. “They should be able to see these numbers and know what’s going on with the school.”

But steering Minnesota school finance away from something that is rocket science will take some doing.

Said Nathan: “When the political leaders of both parties decide it’s a high priority, or there’s a decision on the part of the governor to make this his number one or two priority, there will probably be some progress.”

Until then, that Ph.D. will come in handy.