SBE acts to secure waiver of Title I carryover rule
By Tom Chorneau
Friday, May 10, 2013
The California State Board of Education accepted an offer from federal officials Thursday to soften the impact of sequestration on school districts and voted to purse a waiver to rules limiting how many Title I dollars can be carried over from one fiscal year to the next.
Existing law provides that no more than 15 percent of a district’s Title I allotment from one budget year can be retained for use in the next. There is a process for receiving an exception to the carryover rule but it can be granted by the state only under certain conditions and its use is limited to once every three years.
The U.S. Department of Education notified states last month that they would accept applications to waive the carryover limits.
The same waiver offer was made two years ago, in the wake of billions of additional federal aid given schools under the stimulus package. The issue was that many schools were not able to spend those dollars quickly enough and would
Tax collections officially up $4.4b, making next week’s May revise much easier
Tax collections officially up $4.4b, making next week’s May revise much easier
It’s official. State Controller John Chiang confirmed earlier this week projections that other agencies were making about the significant increase in tax collections so far this spring, reporting gains that outpaced projections by $4.4 billion.
Led by a jump in personal income taxes, the state’s revenue picture continues to improve even though April itself was down slightly and state spending ran well ahead of estimates. Still, the state’s chief fiscal officer noted the state for the first time in six years didn’t have to raid any internal accounts to pay its bills.
“But, there remains significant debt that must be shed before we can claim victory and these unanticipated revenues provide us with an important opportunity to take further steps toward long-term fiscal stability,” Chiang said in a statement.
Still, the news couldn’t be better for the Brown administration, which is expected to release the revised May budget next week, likely Wednesday. Schools can expect to receive a substantial share of the additional revenues; some insiders believe the governor will use a lot of that money to increase the base funding allocation given to all schools under the Local Control Funding Formula.
While April traditionally was the state’s most critical revenue month, since a change in tax law made in 2009, June