The funding mechanism for teacher pay raises is on its way to Governor Dennis Daugaard’s desk; now we just have to make sure the House doesn’t mess up the funding formula.
Senate Bill 131 is on today’s House calendar, but it’s deep on the list. Whether it comes up today or gets bumped to next week, House members will want to pay close attention to the amendment added to the formula in House Appropriations Monday.
SB 131 makes a fundamental change in the K-12 funding formula: instead of allocating dollars per student, SB 131 divides student enrollment by an ideal student-teacher ratio, then multiplies by a target level of teacher pay, benefits, and overhead. Instead of adding a separate small-school adjustment to account for the fact that smaller schools have some built-in inefficiencies, the SB 131 formula uses a sliding scale of ideal student-teacher ratios, smaller for smaller schools, larger for larger schools.
SB 131 originally set the student-teacher ratio at 12.5 for school districts with enrollment of 200 students or fewer and 15.0 for school districts with 600 or more students. The ratio grows linearly from 12.5 to 15.0 for the schools in between—e.g., a school with 400 students would be funded at a student-teacher ratio of 13.75, the midpoint of the sliding scale.
According to my calculations, that formula treated four out of five South Dakota school districts as if they had too many teachers. SB 131 doesn’t force those schools to fire any teachers, but it only provides enough funding to raise the ideal number of teachers to the target salary average, thus requiring school districts to choose between cutting staff or accepting lower-than-target average salaries.
Monday’s amendment alleviates that pressure by changing the bottom of the student-teacher ratio scale from 12.5 to 12.0. By itself, that change spreads an additional $5,006,530 among the 109 smallest of our 150 school districts. Attentive House members will want to ask exactly where appropriators will get that extra money.
The original SB 131 formula effectively established a statewide target student-teacher ratio of 14.46. The amended formula nudges that statewide ratio down to 14.37. The actual statewide student-teacher ratio last school year was 13.79.
The amended formula thus still pressures schools to run leaner on staff. By my calculations based on 2014–2015 school year data, the original formula tagged a total of 633 “excess” teacher FTEs spread across 120 school districts. The amended formula finds 582 “excess” teacher FTEs spread across 114 school districts.
The gains aren’t much for any one school. only 81 schools see their target teacher FTEs increase by more than 0.5; none gain one full teacher. 58 schools gain over $50,000; the biggest winner is Elkton, enrollment 279, which gets a bit over $57,000 extra from Monday’s amendment on top of the $217K in new state aid provided by the original SB 131 formula.
So Cory, are there any schools that could get less with this plan versus what they get now?
I believe the full amendment also created a “hold harmless” position for schools that have large “other” funds. Some of those schools believe that over the course of five years, when several sources of those “other funds” are folded into local effort, they will fall behind from where they would have been if not on the new formula. Now there is the ability for them to keep the “better deal” and be frozen there until the point where the new formula catches up to them. I like that it provides a safety net – and shows the general consensus from the BRTF and the legislature to not have losers in the transition to the new formula.
If I remember correctly, testimony in committee indicated that this shift requires less state money for the formula (if locals opt out – they would be relying on their own local efforts more) and that finances the drop to 12 from 12.5 on the small school end of the scale.
Steve, no, not from the ratio change to 12.0. Schools with enrollment of 600+ see no change, of course.
O, interesting offset! So we don’t need new revenue?