K-12 bill has ups and downs

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Aug. 12, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

The final analysis of the state's K-12 education bill is done, and it is not necessarily good news for the Bemidji School District, according to Business Manager Bryan Westerman.

Westerman told the Bemidji School Board Monday at a work session that previous prognostications as to how the bill will affect the district were correct. It will benefit from the respective $76 and $79 increases to the general education revenue formula in fiscal years 1998 and 1999, but will suffer from losses in training and experience funding.

According to a state survey of districts, Bemidji will receive 3.78 percent more funding in fiscal year 1998, and the following year the district will receive an additional .76 percent in funding -- increasing the budget over the two-year period by about $1.16 million.

However, the numbers are deceiving, according to Westerman, because the money the district receives from the state to offset the higher costs of employing experienced teachers -- called training and experience money -- is scheduled to be phased out over several years. For the district that means a revenue loss of about $130 per weighted average daily membership, and overall could mean an accumulated loss of about $800,000 in a few short years. Added to the expected $800,000 shortfall in the district's budget, the loss of training and experience money could be a large problem.

Westerman added that because of the loss of about $130 per WADM in training and experience money, the Legislature's allocated additional $155 per WADM will be reduced to about $25.

"The state will be giving us better information on how the 'T and E' will be phased out," he said. "But it appears what will happen is that it will be phased out in several short years. It'll probably be gone in four years."

The Legislature also changed the compensatory funding formula which potentially could have a major impact on the district, he said. Formerly the amount of compensatory aid -- given to support economically depressed districts -- was based upon district-wide Aid to Families with Dependent Children counts.

The formula is now based on the number of free and reduced meals at a school site. So the money will be allocated directly to individual schools. Formerly, the money was distributed by the district, but now the district has less control over how it is distributed. So, in a sense, the district could gain revenue because of the new formula, but the money will be tied to the specific schools that generate it, Westerman said.

In other developments, the school district will probably see a 2 percent increase in its special education funding over the base 1997 revenue, but this is only if the estimates of pupil growth and expenditure growth state wide used by the Legislature are credible, Westerman wrote in a report to the board.

Secondly, the district will be receiving a one-time $24 per WADM capital expenditure increase that can only be used for technology purchases. That's good, he wrote. However, the problem with one-time funding allocations is that, in the future, they can cause problems in sustaining spending levels.

And finally, there is a $10 per child increase allocated in the Early Childhood Family Education program, which will help to alleviate some of the deficit spending that has occurred in Bemidji's program in the last few years, but the increase will not allow the district to expand the program.

"The reality for this district is a 4 to 5 percent increase in the next two years," Westerman said, summing up his findings.