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Upcoming Education Hearing & Legislative Fiscal Bureau Budget Summary

By Dee Pettack | July 14, 2023

The Assembly Committee on Education has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, July 20th.  Please let me know if you have any comments on the bills listed below – please don’t hesitate to reach out and share your thoughts with me.

The notice for the hearing can be found here.

Assembly Bill 163: Relating to: supplying anti-choking devices in schools.

Assembly Bill 108: Relating to: the definition of “strip search” for the purpose of the prohibition against strip-searching a pupil.

Assembly Bill 293: Relating to: defining critical mapping data for school safety plans.

Assembly Bill 138: Relating to: issuing a declaration of equivalency of high school graduation or a general educational development certificate.

FROM THE WHEELER REPORT:  SCHOOL FUNDING EFFECTS OF BUDGET

A new memo was released today by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau titled Estimated Effects of K-12 Funding for School Districts Under Act 11 and 19. The memo begins highlighting “It is not possible to project with certainty which districts would be eligible for the low revenue adjustment amount in the 2023-25 biennium under these provisions because that depends, in part, on future enrollment changes in individual districts, levy decisions of local school boards, and other factors in the revenue limit calculation. Data on revenue per pupil and the three-year enrollment average for 2022-23, however, can be used to provide some indication of which districts might be eligible for the low revenue adjustment amount.”

Act 19 (the budget) provided a per pupil adjustment under revenue limits at $325 in 2023-24 and an additional $325 in 2024-25. Act 11 (the per pupil and school choice changes) increased the low revenue adjustments under revenue limits from $10,000 per pupil in 2022-23 to $11,000 per pupil in 2023-24 and each year after. (Attachment 1 provides a district by district listing of possible changes.)

The memo explains the possible impacts for declining enrollment districts which could be impacted by an interaction between the current law base revenue hold harmless adjustment and the per pupil and low revenue adjustments. There are 28 districts with failed operating referendum which will impact their eligibility for low revenue adjustments in the 2023-25 biennium. However, given the $325 revenue limit per pupil adjustment under the budget, and the $11,000 low revenue adjustment under Act 11, there are only 19 districts with base revenue per pupil of less than $10,665 to start 2023-24.

The memo next addressed the changes to the special education aid. The budget increased special education funding to provide an estimated reimbursement rate of 33.3% of eligible costs, and provides funding in 2023-24 and 2024-25 for the estimated costs. (The estimated changes are in the Attachment.)

Finally, the memo addressed the changes for school-based mental health services grants. The budget provides a one-time increase of $15 million GPR in each year of the biennium for school-based mental health services grants and changes the program to require DPI to distribute the funding on a per pupil basis to all eligible entities. The funding would provide payments of approximately $31 per pupil in 2023-24 and 2024-25, and $12 per pupil in future years. (The estimated changes are in the Attachment.)

The memo only addresses the next budget cycle worth of school funding and does not address the Governor’s veto providing per pupil changes in the future.

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