The 2010 Senate Budget
Introduction
General Government
Public Education
UNC System
Community Colleges
Justice and Public Safety
Health and Human Services
Transportation
Natural and Economic Resources
The North Carolina Senate’s proposed budget recommendations for FY 2010-2011 lays out more moderate cuts to Public Education than the Governor recommended earlier this year. Public Education would be cut by 2.9% ($219 million) under the Senate’s budget instead of Gov. Purdue’s proposed 3.5% ($260 million) reduction.
The Senate specifically revised the Governor’s suggestions by refusing a “management flexibility reduction” of $135 million.
A provision in the Senate’s budget bill does, however, allow Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to require teachers to take up to two days unpaid leave in order to help fill budgetary gaps.
The overall cuts would change the 2009 Approved Budget for FY 2010-11 from $7.36 billion to $7.14 billion. Not to be overlooked, however, is the $373 million in federal funds currently counted as a “cut” to the state budget. The $373 million comes courtesy of the “Education Stabilization Fund” created as part of the federal stimulus act. Therefore, actual public education spending in the Senate’s plan would come to $7.51 billion.
Major expansions and reductions include:
Expansion
- Leadership Academy: $200,000. Academy provides professional development to superintendents enabling them to train principals to address critical areas such as student achievement and teacher recruitment and retention.
Reductions
- Central Office Administration: $10 million. This reduces monetary allotments to LEAs for the purposes of hiring administrative staff, e.g. superintendents, finance officers, athletic trainers, and transportation directors.
- Average Daily Membership Adjustment: $5 million. Because of student enrollment growth slower than originally anticipated, less money will need to be appropriated.
- More at Four: $26 million. The Senate budget plan proposes a permanent reduction of $10 million to the program, but half of that is estimated to come from savings realized by capping administrative costs. There is another $16 million one-time spending reduction included, to be replaced by an anticipated increase in federal funds.
- Assistant Principals: $4.5 million. Funds used to employ assistant principals will be reduced by 4.8%.
- Mentoring: $9,214,190. All funding of LEAs for mentoring programs will be discontinued for FY 2010-11 only.
- Dropout Prevention Grants: $13 million. Opposed to Governor Purdue’s proposed $1.5 million expansion of Dropout Prevention Grants, the Senate recommends that this program be effectively discontinued.
- Appropriations to Non-Public School Organizations: about $200,000. The Senate proposes a 5% reduction of funding to programs like Teach For America, NC Science Olympiad, etc.
- School Bus Replacement: $11.9 million. There would be a 1 year moratorium on replacing school buses under the Senate’s plan; with $1 million being made available for emergency bus replacement purchases.
- Instructional Supplies: $5 million. An overall cut of 6% for school supplies.
- Child and Family Support Teams: $2.5 million. Reduces funding used to support school nurses and social workers by 21.3%.
- Protection of the Classroom while maximizing flexibility: up to $80 million. Teachers may be furloughed or released from employment, but only after implementing “administrative and other operating efficiencies.” State Board of Education will notify each individual school administrative unit of the total amount they will be required to cut.
In reviewing cuts to the proposed budget, I was alarmed to see that the North Carolina Science Olympiad program would be eliminated. I am a parent/volunteer coach and have been involved with the program for three years. There are very few enrichment programs that are literally open to all students in public, private and homeschool situations that actually offer relatively low cost enrichment with tremendous benefit to the student. As a staunch, life-long Republican, I have always favored tax dollars funding infrastructure and little else. Well, this is infrastructure of the most necessary kind. We pay lip service to the idea of improving math and science in this country and then our Governor releases a budget with cuts to an outstanding and efficient program that encourages students from all socio-economic levels to explore science and math. Both of my boys, 10 and 13, are involved in Science Olympiad and love it…and there is a ton of extra work for them but they have learned so much-including information my 13 year old found useful when taking the ACT last year. More importantly, it gets parents, teachers and kids all working together, again at very little relative cost to taxpayers, in science. My children attend a private religious school in Apex and this is one of the few academic programs available to them. If you need to save money, start with sports. Don’t get me wrong-my kids also play sports-but we pay full freight for these programs…no free rides. We also pay our own Science Olympiad registration fees and buy all of our supplies. Science Olympiad is an invaluable educational tool with solid results. More than 10,000 elementary, middle and high school students participate in this program which creates and enhances our future designers, engineers, builders, doctors, etc. If that’s not infrastructure, I don’t what is. This program should absolutely not be cut, but rather it should be expanded to all 100 North Carolina counties. I have visited public schools in Wake County and schools in Alamance Count and there is no comparison…children in less wealthy counties should be given equal opportunities to excel and Science Olympiad does just that.
In this job economy there is a surplus of teachers looking for openings. Recruitment is not an issue, and the problem is with the public school system retaining POOR teachers. Look at the data people, head start programs have been proven to be ineffective, ESL programs encourage illegal immigration and the rate of growth of school administrators has out-stripped both the rate of growth of teachers and students.
Transfer Leadership Academy: $200,000 to the Science Olympiad, a STEM program that is both efficient and effective. The rich Superintendents do not need another boondoggle on the backs of the tax payers.