The biggest change in Gov. Corbett's proposed education budget for the 2012-13 school year is his plan to use block grants to dole out a large portion of the state's public education payments to school districts.
He proposes setting aside $6.5 billion for the grants, which would cover basic education funding - an all-purpose state subsidy to school districts - and state reimbursement programs for local Social Security payments and transportation costs.
The grant program would make up more than 70 percent of the state's proposed $9.05 billion allocation for K-12 public education.
The basic education money is divided among districts based on a number of factors, including their size and wealth. Transportation and Social Security payments are based on actual expenses. The new block grant could be spent for any educational purpose.
Corbett seeks an increase for 2012-13 that averages less than 1 percent over last year's combined allocations. No district would get less than it did last year.
"The rationale here is clear," Corbett told the legislature in his Feb. 7 budget address. "Local districts know better how to spend and allocate resources than do bureaucrats in Harrisburg."
The deadline for passing a state budget is June 30; it is not clear whether the legislature will approve the proposal.
The plan has its critics, who fear it would make it easier for the state to leave local districts responsible for future increases in transportation and payroll tax costs.
The state currently reimburses school districts for a portion of those costs each year before getting final expense figures. If the costs wind up higher than anticipated, the state covers the difference.
Districts spend more than $1 billion a year on transportation and the same amount on Social Security taxes. State reimbursement for Social Security costs averages about 50 percent; it averages about 40 percent for transportation.
If Corbett's block grant becomes law, next school year, districts would still be reimbursed for actual transportation and Social Security expenses.
But it is widely expected that for following years, block-grant funding would be based on a percentage increase over the previous year's amount, not on transportation and payroll figures, said Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.
"There is a concern that increases in costs would not be reflected in the grants," Himes said.
That might mean, for example, that if gasoline prices spiked, the districts, not the state, would be on the hook for the extra cost. And if teachers get raises or if enrollment expands, districts would pay the salary increases and all the additional payroll tax cost.
Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller said he would not speculate about what form the new block grant would take in future years. In an e-mail, he wrote only that it would "provide a block of funding to a district and the district would need to make the necessary decisions to manage their expenditures."
Covering transportation and Social Security costs with block grants could also have the unintended consequence of building inequity into the funding formula.
That's because some districts, especially poorer ones, have cut staffing and transportation in recent years, reducing their state subsidy amounts. Future percentage increases in the block grants would be based on the lower amounts districts now receive.
"The biggest danger with the block-grant proposal is the movement away from using formulas to distribute funding that are based on real numbers that reflect the real needs of students," said Baruch Kintisch, a lawyer with the Education Law Center in Philadelphia and a school-funding expert. "When that happens, the neediest school districts don't get their fair share."
The proposed block grant may not lead to much new spending flexibility, because the basic education fund is already an all-purpose allocation, and districts don't have a choice about paying Social Security taxes. Student transportation is not required by state law but in many districts, it is regarded as a necessity because the distance from home to school is substantial or walking would be dangerous.
Paperwork would not change much for Social Security because districts have to calculate it anyway.
Time and expense in figuring the transportation subsidy would be cut. Calculating transportation costs "is a paperwork nightmare," Himes said. Not having to do that, he said, would be "a significant reporting relief."
He proposes setting aside $6.5 billion for the grants, which would cover basic education funding - an all-purpose state subsidy to school districts - and state reimbursement programs for local Social Security payments and transportation costs.
The grant program would make up more than 70 percent of the state's proposed $9.05 billion allocation for K-12 public education.
The basic education money is divided among districts based on a number of factors, including their size and wealth. Transportation and Social Security payments are based on actual expenses. The new block grant could be spent for any educational purpose.
Corbett seeks an increase for 2012-13 that averages less than 1 percent over last year's combined allocations. No district would get less than it did last year.
"The rationale here is clear," Corbett told the legislature in his Feb. 7 budget address. "Local districts know better how to spend and allocate resources than do bureaucrats in Harrisburg."
The deadline for passing a state budget is June 30; it is not clear whether the legislature will approve the proposal.
The plan has its critics, who fear it would make it easier for the state to leave local districts responsible for future increases in transportation and payroll tax costs.
The state currently reimburses school districts for a portion of those costs each year before getting final expense figures. If the costs wind up higher than anticipated, the state covers the difference.
Districts spend more than $1 billion a year on transportation and the same amount on Social Security taxes. State reimbursement for Social Security costs averages about 50 percent; it averages about 40 percent for transportation.
If Corbett's block grant becomes law, next school year, districts would still be reimbursed for actual transportation and Social Security expenses.
But it is widely expected that for following years, block-grant funding would be based on a percentage increase over the previous year's amount, not on transportation and payroll figures, said Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials.
"There is a concern that increases in costs would not be reflected in the grants," Himes said.
That might mean, for example, that if gasoline prices spiked, the districts, not the state, would be on the hook for the extra cost. And if teachers get raises or if enrollment expands, districts would pay the salary increases and all the additional payroll tax cost.
Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Tim Eller said he would not speculate about what form the new block grant would take in future years. In an e-mail, he wrote only that it would "provide a block of funding to a district and the district would need to make the necessary decisions to manage their expenditures."
Covering transportation and Social Security costs with block grants could also have the unintended consequence of building inequity into the funding formula.
That's because some districts, especially poorer ones, have cut staffing and transportation in recent years, reducing their state subsidy amounts. Future percentage increases in the block grants would be based on the lower amounts districts now receive.
"The biggest danger with the block-grant proposal is the movement away from using formulas to distribute funding that are based on real numbers that reflect the real needs of students," said Baruch Kintisch, a lawyer with the Education Law Center in Philadelphia and a school-funding expert. "When that happens, the neediest school districts don't get their fair share."
The proposed block grant may not lead to much new spending flexibility, because the basic education fund is already an all-purpose allocation, and districts don't have a choice about paying Social Security taxes. Student transportation is not required by state law but in many districts, it is regarded as a necessity because the distance from home to school is substantial or walking would be dangerous.
Paperwork would not change much for Social Security because districts have to calculate it anyway.
Time and expense in figuring the transportation subsidy would be cut. Calculating transportation costs "is a paperwork nightmare," Himes said. Not having to do that, he said, would be "a significant reporting relief."
4 comments:
What does that mean?
"If You Don't Like It, Lump It"
What does lump it mean?
I whipped out my google-fu, and here;s what I came up with.
Said of an unpleasant outcome that one has no choice but to accept - one can either endure it willingly or endure it with suffering.
Origin
When we are given a fait accompli in a situation in which we would normally expect some sort of choice, we might not be too pleased about it. We may then be told to 'like it or lump it'. Had the expression been coined in the 16th century this is no doubt what Thomas Hobson would have said to his prospective customers when he offered them 'Hobson's choice'.
But how exactly do we 'lump' something? Although 'lump' is almost always used as a noun rather than a verb, there are many meanings of the verb form of 'lump' to choose from:
- To bet all of one's money on a single wager (first recorded in the 19th century)
- To make something into a lump (18th century)
- To classify various things as a group, i.e. lump them together (17th century)
- To slouch along lazily (17th century)
- To look sulky or disagreeable (16th century)
Of course, it is the last of these lumps that is the alternative to 'like it'.
'Lumping' in the sense of mooching about grumpily may well be of Irish origin and is first recorded in Richard Stanyhurst's Treatise Describing Irelande, 1577. The Dublin born Stanyhurst risked the wrath of his contemporaries by suggesting that the English rule in Ireland wasn't the source of all their troubles:
Here percase some snappish carper will snuffinglie snib me for debasing the Irish language: because that by proofe and experience we see, that the pale was neuer in more florishing estate than when it was wholie English, and neuer in woorsse plight than since it hath infranchised the Irish. But some will saie, that I shew my selfe herein as friuolous... They stand lumping and lowring, fretting and fuming.
[Note: Stanyhurst's expressive phrase 'snuffingly snib' means 'rebuke in a snorting manner'.]
[Note: see also 'Beyond the pale'.]
Soon afterwards, in 1581, Barnaby Rich used the term in Farewell to Military Profession:
She beganne to froune, lumpe, and lowre at her housebande.
Rich was a naval captain and undoubtedly English, but most of his writing related to Ireland and he moved to Dublin to write on his retirement from the Navy.
People had been lumping it for a few hundred years before anyone thought of the phrase 'like it or lump it'. A play on words between the noun and verb usages of the word lump was what brought it about. The early uses of the expression refer to things that have lumps in them, as in this example from the London magazine The Monthly Mirror, 1807, in a piece titled Rules For Punning:
Mrs. ...purposely sends a dish of tea to a lady, without sugar, of which she complains.
Mr. ...(Handing the sugar basin) - Well, ma'am, if you don't like it, you may lump it.
The English love of wordplay is long lasting, some might say chronic, and Zadie Smith made the same little joke in her novel White Teeth, 2000:
We're all English now, mate. Like it or lump it, as the rhubarb said to the custard.
The first example that I can find of the precise 'like it or lump it' wording of the expression is in Specimens, 1841, Josiah Shippey's book of morally uplifting essays, which were delivered in the form of tortured rhyming couplets, worthy of William McGonagall:
Yet his merit, though some may be ignorant of it,
And as he by it wishes each one may profit;
Imperiously forces, or like it or lump it,
Himself, honest fellow, to blow his own trumpet.
Well aren't you clever!
Would "go pound sand" have been a better phrase? It's easily to understand and quite familiar to school board fans.
"The origin of the expression go pound sand is from a longer expression, not to know (have enough sense to) pound sand down a rathole. Filling rat holes with sand is menial work, and telling someone to pound sand down a hole is like telling them to go fly a kite. The expression dates to at least 1912 and is common in the midwestern United States."
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