Gov. Brown's proposal delays $1 billion for schools until 2019
Regarding the $1 billion in one-time funding for K-12 schools that Gov. Jerry Brown proposed last week in his 2017-18 budget: The word is don’t count on it – at least not next year.
In what a school consultant is calling a “bait and switch,” the Department of Finance is saying that the money won’t be available until May 2019 at the earliest – and possibly only partially then. The department will release the funding after it’s sure that the revenue projections on which the budget is based came true.
“While we recognize that there may be some who would prefer that these one-time funds be released sooner, given the recent and demonstrated volatility of revenues, we believe that postponing the release of these funds in the manner we have proposed is a prudent policy in light of this uncertainty,” department spokesman H.D. Palmer wrote in an email.
Brown didn’t mention the delay in his May 11 press conference in which he released his revised state budget plan. He said that K-12 schools would get $2.8 billion more, a 5.4 percent increase to the current budget. But within hours, Department of Finance officials began telling district officials in meetings that more than a third of the new money – the one-time funding that districts could use however they want – would be withheld for nearly two years. The $1 billion would equal about $166 per student statewide.
The $1.4 billion increase to the Local Control Funding Formula – the primary source of districts’ general spending – that Brown also has proposed would not be delayed, Palmer said.
Brown’s budgeters predict that an economic recession, with a loss of state revenue, is right around the bend, and so are being extra cautious. They also want to avoid repeating what has occurred the past three years, in which actual revenues came in below the forecasts on which the budgets were based. Rather than lower next year’s Gov. Brown’s proposal delays $1 billion for schools until 2019 | EdSource:
