Our View

Our View

A little common sense would go a long way here

It is interesting to learn that at least some of our state lawmakers are finally realizing the funding inequities in how the more than $150 million annually is divvied up among school districts simply to pay for transportation.

You see, right now each school district receives the exact same amount of money per student to provide transportation, a formula that obviously does a disservice to rural districts where transportation costs are far greater than the costs incurred by urban districts.

This is just one of the changes lawmakers are considering in their so-called influential report that they say will have a big role in determining how much money public schools will receive from the state.

We’re being told lawmakers on the panel are embracing a change that would fund the use of school buses based on their actual costs. The change would decrease funding in urban districts, such as Little Rock as well as those in Northwest Arkansas, but certainly help rural districts that spend more on busing than the state provides.

This is the way these districts should have been funded for transportation all along and why some of this state’s rural district superintendents haven’t succeeded in making this change a long time ago is beyond us understanding.

Every legislative session when lawmakers consider a new budget public education funding it is always a popular topic among politicians, especially during elections.

Arkansas taxpayers are tapped to the tune of $3 BILLION each year to educate students from kindergarten through 12th grade and there is a suggestion of increasing per-student spending by 1.15 percent in fiscal 2018. Let’s make it clear that a change of 1 percent or even 2 percent in funding has a a multimillion-dollar impact on the state’s budget.

We’re even hearing that there are some spend-happy politicians who say the suggested 1.15 percent is still not enough even though that would represent about $35 millions more a year.

To make this even easier for the common Arkansans to understand about how these lawmakers use their tax dollars for public education for each student they spend $6,646 each and that doesn’t count what increase they plan on approving. So then, the more students there are the more money a district receives which is why superintendents get so upset when there is even a hint that someone wants to create a charter school because charter schools take away students and the funding that goes along with that.

What also needs to be taken into consideration is the fact that the $6,649 Arkansas spends on each student per year doesn’t account for what the federal government provides, which brings per-student spending to $9,538 in the 2012-13 school year. The transportation costs, which are totally different, accounts for $321.20 per student based on the current formula.

Now, with all that said let us also point out that the state ranks No. 31 in the nation for per-student funding, but as Committee Chairman Bruce Cozart, R-Hot Springs, said that, “I know that adequacy has no limits on money… but we’re going to run out of money by the end.”

Based on the enormity of the situation we would hope that lawmakers slow down a little bit on this and look at everything very carefully before making any costly decision.