Update 22:04 CDT: Numerous well-informed readers have pointed out that I misread the budget! My state aid to K-12 numbers from FY2006 through FY2016 include special ed and other budget lines; the FY2017 budget line does not. The actual increase in the separate line item for state aid to general education is $101 million above last year’s appropriation, a 29.0% increase. I’ll work up a new chart shortly!
Update 23:21 CDT: The new spreadsheet and post are up! I am deleting the original post with its erroneous numbers to prevent confusion. I regret the error and hope the new numbers are closer to the positive fiscal realities our schools face in the coming school year.
If this is the actual amount of increase schools are getting, there where the heck is the $107 in the sales tax increase going?
$107 million, I mean…. Whoops!
If that $21.6 million really turns out to be all that our teachers are getting from the half-cent sales tax hike, then something has gone terribly wrong. Somehow property tax relief will be receiving a bigger boost than teacher pay, giving even more “relief” to those you wouldn’t think need relief. Personally, I thought HB1182 would have been better with that part left out. There was no Blue Ribbon Task Force on property tax.
Well 3.5 million is going to Vo-tech teachers which the Blue Ribbon or the Governor had not mentioned, only the Watertown Area reps did. Senator Holien of Watertown questioned that plus the property tax in argument on the floor and got shut down immediately.
As usual in SD we worry about DC. With 3 reps and 800,000 people we have no say there anyway, so we should be concerned with Pierre, our county and city government. Problem being in a one party state it will never change.
Maybe there’s French math going on here, maybe there’s money somewhere else for teachers, or maybe the whole BluRT-F was a giant trick foisted upon the masses and nobody in the legislatures even caught onto it. Or else they were in on it, and the ones that weren’t just weren’t smart enough to figure it all out.
Corey, can you please explain where you are getting your numbers for the current fiscal year(FY 2016)? I looked up the general appropriations bill (HB 1208 Engrossed) from the 2015 Legislative Session and find that $347,719,770 was appropriated for State Aid to general education. When I read SB 172 (Engrossed) I find that $448,404,255 was appropriated.
Sandra, I’m looking at the full budget book, page 12-5:
http://bfm.sd.gov/budget/rec17/SD_Rec_2017_Entire.pdf
Am I misreading lines?
Travis, the $107M in sales tax is divided into three chunks:
34%, about $36M, goes to property tax relief.
63%, $67M, goes to teacher pay.
3%, about $3M, goes to vo-tech teacher pay.
This isn’t nearly enough so we will continue to come back for more.
Mr. H, you should ask Al Novstrup or somebody familiar with reading budgets and bills to explain all of this. Call the state or something. I think the book you are reading is old and doesn’t include the BluRT-F amounts.
Mr. Winegar, as I predicted there is not enough money in the worlds to make the teachers happy. It will be interesting to see what happens when the fatcat administrators come back this year, and instead of with their hats in their hands they show up with sacks to carry more money. I wonder how the legislatures will react.
Cory, I believe the figures in the budget book you provided included formula dollars($347,719,770) plus Special Ed ($54,883,378), Sparcity ($1,900,033)and Technology in Schools ($9,312,086). For FY 17 the budget book will show roughly $527,342,057 – Formula ($448,404,255), Special Ed (($63,646,857), Sparcity ($2,009,669) and Tech. in Schools ($13,281,276).
Is there an actual line in the budget for crony payoffs or does that come under the heading of money that just disappears for no apparent reason?
Sandra is correct. Formula was $347 million this year and will be $448 million next year. I’m trying to figure out why that is approximately $101 million increase. If they run the property tax relief of $36 million through there you get close to the $67 million that HB 1182 was supposed to provide.
Remain calm all is well! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro
Cory, your 413,878,336 that you have for 2016 is the total of Sandra’s numbers for funding formula, special ed, sparsity and technology in schools.
And comparing apples to apples, I believe, Sandra’s number of $527 million is the total for 2017 of funding formula, special ed, sparsity, and technology in schools dollars.
So, subtracting $527.3 million minus $413.87 million equals an increase of approximately $113.43 million.
Special ed funding for 2017 is up $8.8 million and technology in schools is up almost $4 million.
Sandra’s right! I need to make a new table! Stay tuned!
Let the record show that basing decisions on French math is always a bad thing to do. Get your facts first, then understand them, then give your speeches on the floor of the legislatures. That’s what Al Novstrup does.
So, no real solution, just another band-aide. That’s all you’re going to get from the Republicans. They’ll pat themselves on the back, though, a make a big deal out of the first aide they provided to pretend to fix the problem they made. Enough people, maybe even some teachers, will be fooled. Another 5-10 years there will be another band-aide proposed. Until you really address the fact that the wealthy don’t pay anything near a fair share toward education, the problem will just linger. Who has the guts to take it on and solve it once and for all?
Or, perhaps, there are some tricks buried in there that they have not yet sprung on us. Remain vigilant.
Hey, while I’m recalculating, help me figure this out:
The Governor said $62.4M of the new sales tax revenue goes to the pay raise formula, while $5M goes toward the other fringe Blue Ribbon programs (mentoring and such). Is that $5M included in this general aid line, or is it elsewhere in the budget?
The plan folds the $19.2M pension levy into the general levy. Does that $19.2M go entirely into this $101M boost for state aid to general education?
The Governor proposed pre-Blue Ribbon to raise the per-student allocation 0.3%. I’m unclear on how to translate that number into the general aid increase that K-12 would have gotten anyway, without the sales tax and the funding formula overhaul. Suggestions?
Cory, I forgot about the pension levy. That would be part of the 101 as would the 5 million for fringe Blue Ribbon programs. That gets us down to approximately $77 million.
Hang on, Grudz. I’m doing this on my own. Al’s got the LRC to hand him numbers. Send me to the Senate, and you’ll get better math and better policy.
Plus, Al Novstrup has never given you this much free rein to comment on his blog, has he?
Mr. H, I don’t think that LRC does any numbers for Al. All the math is done by the Governor. That LRC office just writes the bills people tell them to write and spells Astronomy wrong.
But true. Mr. Novstrup’s blog is not even close to as interesting as yours. You have a far better blog than Al. Or David for that matter.
O.K., Darin, let’s see what we’ve accounted for:
$100.6M – $67.4M – $19.2M = $14.0M not accounted for in the state aid to general education increase. What’s the other $14.0M coming from?
How about the overhead costs or benefits to reach the governors 48,500?
Just spitballin’ here and reverse engineering so to speak: $14 million divided by 9074 teachers assumed by the governor equals $1542 per teacher which is roughly 20% of the $8,000 the governor wants to raise teacher pay by. I think they used 29% in the governors formula so maybe there is more than $14 million somewhere in there to cover the benefits on the $8,000 increase.
Maybe it’s not straight American math. Maybe there are other law bills that passed that change math on the taxes that do some math on how much the state has to pay based on some other laws. All this math is way beyond grudznick, but I’m just sayin…
Mr. Larson has a point. There are probably other costs like heinous taxes and things the schools have to bear unless those raises are all tax free or the schools will just hide them from the IRS.
29% for benefits and 31% for overhead would apply to the entire appropriation for state aid to general education. If we divvy up the $101M by those factors, we get $23.9M for overhead, $17.3M for benefits, and $59.8M for teacher salaries. If the $101M includes $19.2M for pension levy, then the 29% benefits factor leaves us short $1.9M for pensions, plus we have to raid overhead to offer any boost for health or other benefits.
The $59.8M raises salaries for 9,400 teachers by $6,360 each.
Glad to see some of you are finally realizing that this bill wasn’t in the best interest of teachers and citizens. Some of you might want to go back and apologize to the legislatures you were bashing because they voted against the bill for a reason, and it wasn’t because they didn’t support education or teachers. In fact a number of them were former educators or had should go back and family members in education. Maybe people should actually visit with the people who were standing up against being strong armed into voting a certain way before jumping to conclusions.
The only apology necessary here, Robbie, is mine for not reading the numbers correctly. I’m working up a new post to make clear just what we’re getting from this bill, a much better picture that my original misreading of the FY2017 budget indicates!
Robbie F, What do you mean “it wasn’t in the best interests of teachers and citizens?” The governor’s plan raises money for teacher salaries by tens of millions of dollars. It has given teachers a reason to think that their state cares about them and our educational system. In case you hadn’t noticed, we have been losing good teachers for years in SD to other states and other professions. It is truly a crisis.
You want me to apologize to the Dark-Agers in the legislature who have been content to let education funding whither on the vine in SD? Good luck with that! I want an apology from them for underfunding education for the last ten years at least.
You have no plan to fund education properly. You never have. You can say you love teachers and education, but if you don’t put your money where your mouth is, your words are hollow. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Matthew 6:21
The legislature cut education funding five years ago, and never looked for the money to restore funding under any “rocks” until now. Faced with a broad and diverse coalition of business leaders, chambers of commerce, farm groups, teachers, administrators, parents, school board members, Democrats and Republicans, who all have recognized the problem, a major step was taken in the right direction.
You are part of the problem, sir. You have no vision for South Dakota. Yours is a poverty mentality of skimping on educational funding to the detriment of our children, our economy and ultimately our state’s future. You have hit a nerve!
Notice! I have deleted the original post above and replaced it with a new post with corrected numbers:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2016/03/13/budget-boosts-k-12-aid-101-million-48k-teacher-pay-possible/
Thank you, Sandra and Darin (and other readers on other channels!) for pointing me toward the correct numbers. I regret my error and hope my new post will clarify the situation.
Darin Larson, The farm groups were lied to in order for the governor to get them on board. THey were under the impression that farmers/ranchers (those that pay the most in taxes to the state) would get a tax break, It appears (correct me if I’m wrong) that the tax break is going to go to homeowners and business owners, which is not the bill of goods that was sold to FB, FU, etc. The governor got what he wanted by any means necessary and we got another regressive tax and further put the burned on our lowest income earners.
Joel, the Governor included this statement in his January 12 explanation of the property tax relief component of his plan:
Please show us the levies passed or the other documentation that shows the above statement to be a lie.
Also please document your claim that farmers and ranchers pay the most in taxes to the state.