Among the bills on the Senate’s Crossover Day agenda is Senate Bill 179, which sets the maximum tax levies for school boards and the target teacher salary on which state funding will be based. In this adjustment to the state K-12 funding formula, Governor Kristi Noem asks that the Legislature increase our target teacher salary 2.5%, over $1,200, from $49,131.96 to $50,360.26.
When we overhauled the K-12 funding formula in 2016 to base funding on a target teacher salary, Governor Dennis Daugaard and the Legislature set the target teacher salary for FY2017 at $48,500. Average teacher pay statewide has yet to hit that target, let alone the modest increase approved by Governor Daugaard last year. Governor Noem’s suggestion in SB 179 would bring the annual rate of increase in target teacher pay over three fiscal years to 1.26%. If we were keeping up with the annual inflation rates of the last three years, we’d be setting the target teacher pay a thousand dollars higher, at $51,400.
The formula is far from final. In Senate Appropriations Wednesday, Senator Justin Cronin (R-23/Gettysburg) amended the proposed maximum ag levy adjustment. Where Governor Noem recommended adjusting the max ag levy from $7.001 per $1,000 in taxable value to $6.821 (the usual sort of mill levy reduction intended to reflect increasing land values), Senator Cronin whacked the ag levy down to a likely budget-strangling $4.821. Were Senator Cronin serious, I don’t think it would hurt the schools; it would just mean local effort would be lower and the state would have to fund the difference to get to the formula target.
But Senator Cronin doesn’t want that. In the minimal smirky committee discussion accompanying his amendment, he and Senator Brock Greenfield (R-2/Clark) indicated the intent was simply to ensure the House would have to amend it back to something reasonable and send it back to the Senate side for further discussion.
SB 179 as written will require the state to come up with more funding for K-12. Section three adjusts the “overhead rate”—the amount the state figures schools need to pay for mostly everything other than teacher pay and benefits—from 31.67% to 33.06%. Adjusting that overhead calculation adds another $903 per teacher to the funding schools would receive. Based on the formula, the total amount per teacher (pay, benefits, and overhead combined) envisioned in SB 179 is $86,442.08, just under $2,990 more per teacher than last year.
Young Mr. Cronin is wise beyond his years, and is the sort of fellow they should have in charge of the budgets in the legislatures. I am told he has much experience in these matters. $50,000 is a heap of money by many people’s standards. The teacher’s union should take a real hard look at this offer.
Sounds anti-education to me.
No surprise
I am (selfishly speaking) still waiting for my $8,000 raise from the Blue Ribbon Era. Educators in Brookings only received $4700 by the time that money trickled-down from administrators and consultants.
The overhead rate going from 31.67% to 33.06% is a bit misleading as this is not a net value for most districts. Correct in that the overhead is intended to cover almost everything other than certified instruction staff compensation, but it is also where the other revenue is being equalized across the state.
Statewide districts will be receiving that increase from 31.67% to 33.06% in their need, but then depending on their local tax collection of other revenue, a method of looking back at their other revenue base and actual other revenue in FY2018 an amount may need to be counted as local effort and in essence subtracted from their need/state aid. This amount counted as local effort statewide is about $12,670,000 for FY2020 so it isn’t more new money from the State in this calculation, it is a redistribution of already collected local taxes.
Other revenue adjustments within the formula (overhead rate calculation) makes the formula a bit confusing or misleading.
Did the testimony at all explain why increase the “overhead” factor (instead of just increasing the teacher salary driving index number)? Is there experience that the ancillary costs of education are higher than the original formula addressed? Originally, one number (the indexed teacher salary) was the one number to change annually; that would drive the whole formula – making calculations of the formula simpler and more direct. Would this allow SD schools to hit the target (from being at $46,979 now)?
It is also worth noting that formula and funding focus by the legislature (and Governor) has been effective in doing what it had originally intended: help alleviate the shortage of well-qualified teachers in SD. I know that both because of the added salary AND the more respectful tone that tricked down from those discussions, more positions are being filled and fewer classrooms are being left without teachers — providing SD students with better options and opportunities moving forward.
It is easy to lose focus of what really does motivate these discussions.
Overhead rate
FY19 – In the funding formula using an approximate 135,000 students statewide, a target teacher salary of $49,131 and an overhead rate of 31.67% the statewide overhead amount is about $180,650,000.
FY20 – In the funding formula using an approximate 135,000 students statewide, a target teacher salary of $50,360 and an overhead rate of 33.06% the statewide overhead amount is about $193,300,000.
These are approximates, but you can see the difference and the state isn’t kicking in $12,650,000 in new money in the overhead section of the formula. This is the result of equalizing the other revenue and not new money from the state going to schools.
Golly, why don’t they just pass a law that says every teacher out there should get a $4,000 raise? You all know grudznick thinks the better teachers should get $6,000 and the less ones should get $2,000, and that assumes that the bad ones who should be fired are already being fired.
Just pass that law. It is so simple.
grudz, OR we could make teacher pay in SD SO enticing that ONLY great teachers are hired from the robust pool created by the plethora of applicants drawn to the excellent professional salaries. If serious about wanting great teachers, stick to solutions that make that happen — that attract pools of great teachers. Grudz, you often lament the pool of teachers, but never speak of real solutions for improving that available pool.
Mr. o, I think the teachers in SD are adequate. I think they are paid accordingly. I do not attempt to address taxing me more just for this one small segment of the population who whines louder any more than I attempt to address how we pay those ladies in the nursing homes who have paid lobbists, who are lobbing for more of your tax payer money for them. It is all about who whines the loudest and most most effectively. Which, once one realizes it is about being effective, do you note that neither the teachers union or the nursing home union have enlisted Mr. Nelson to their cause? I ask you, are these people missing the boat or are they wiser than we would initially think?
My dear grudznick, I wold never characterize the good legislators following their Constitutional mandate to provide public education to the good people of South Dakota as succumbing to “whining”; nor would I consider the scope of public education as “a small segment of our population.”
Grudz/Jeremiah Murphy probably got lousy grades in school, was picked on by bullies, had a huge unrequited crush on the teacher who gave him an F, never had a date and is still waiting for his acne to clear up.
That’s my guess about why he whines and whimpers and carries on about schools and teachers every chance he gets. Poor boy.
Paying employees better never hurts job performance, regardless of field. That’s just basic personnel management.
My teacher crush was requited, in the classroom, Ms. Geelsdottir. Otherwise you are spot on about grudznick’s acne and dating. If you are willing to take a walk on wild side and toy with the hetro game, are you open this coming Tuesday?
The fellow above, who is Mr. just a teacher, may have a valid point. While I don’t think every teacher was promised a $8,000 raise, and the better ones should have gotten more than the average ones, I am not sure enough was done about the fatcat administrators siphoning off these monies for themselves. I am always concerned about the fatcat administrators, who get paid far more than they are worth, and not enough trickling down to the good teachers. We should institute a trickle-up policy where we give money to the good teachers, who trickle it up to the fatcats.
Teaching and social work doesn’t pay in SD
2 important jobs as well
Perhaps this young Mr. Cronin has a game plan in mind that is beyond the ken of those of us not in the legislatures. I just bet you a fat breakfast at the Firehouse Inn that Mr. Cronin is manipulating those other fellows on the other side of the legislatures. It will all become clear to the rest of us eventually.
The pay of the vastly over-staffed legislators should be tied to teacher pay. Days value for days value of work and not 35 or 45- day session equivalent to a 180+ day school year. And include in the legislative value the rich per diem & travel, for most teachers receive little to none.
There ought be an accounting or book-keeping or math teacher who could figure out the formula.