State’s large Education Trust Fund: How much is used in classrooms?
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
In My Humble Opinion
Jodi McDade
School is almost out for this year and the legislature passed a record budget for next school year.
The new budget is $9.3 billion with an increase of $550 million! Where did all this extra money come from? And how much, if any, is earmarked for the purpose of educating our children IN the classroom? Teachers will be getting a 2% raise that probably is not enough for what they have to put up with.
There is also additional funding for most “education programs.” But, what exactly does that term mean?
Funding for education is one of the most convoluted systems I’ve ever seen. There are three lines of funding – the federal government through several departments and agencies, the state government (in Alabama through the Education Trust Fund) and local government in each county. All of this comes from we the taxpayers.
I had originally thought that most of the funding came from the federal government, but, in researching, I found only about 11% is received here in Alabama. There are 12 tax funding streams at the state level, and the largest are the individual and corporate income tax, sales tax, utility tax, and use tax.
The Education Trust Fund is the largest operating budget in the State of Alabama. There are many different things the budget includes – support, maintenance and development of the state’s public education; debt service and capital improvements relating to educational facilities; and other functions related to educating citizens of Alabama. The different programs that are included are K-12 education, public library services, performing and fine arts, various scholarship programs, the state’s educational regulatory departments, and two- and four-year colleges and universities. The ETF also funds non-state agencies that provide educational services, including disease counseling and education,\ and youth development.
What I did learn from a friend who was an accountant in the Alabama Department of Education is that the federal funding itself comes from many different federal agencies and programs, all with different requirements and stipulations. But not all the programs and mandates from the U.S. Department of Education are funded by them – it is up to the state and local governments to find the funding. Also, just the cost of the employees who are needed to make sure all the funds are correctly itemized in the correct account is staggering.
When I worked in the Gordon Persons Building in Montgomery where the Alabama Department of Education was housed, I saw amazing wastes of money going into and out of their offices. This was almost 10 years ago, and I “hope” some of this has been corrected. But it was clear to me and others that most of the money spent was in that building and not in the classrooms. It is a large bureaucracy with a lot of red tape.
The amount of funding from the state to the individual school systems is also hard to follow. It is based on so many different areas that it is virtually impossible to figure out unless you understand governmental accounting (which is backward from corporate accounting) and the hundreds and hundreds of programs that are included. I tried to read both a state budget and a Coosa County budget several years ago and I might as well have been trying to read a document in Greek, Roman AND Japanese!
But, before I close, let’s compare the Educational Trust Fund budget to the General Fund budget that has to pay for EVERYTHING except education. Next year’s budget is $3.3 billion – one third of the ETF! The Medicaid Agency will receive an increase of $93 million – up to $955 million. The Department of Corrections will get a raise of $71.3 million up to $733 million.
The Department of Human Resources, which administers food programs and child protective services, will get a 15% increase up to $140.8 million. And the Department of Mental Health budget will go from $211 million to $235 million. And state employees will get a 2% raise. Other agencies either remain at level funding or received smaller increases.
Now, do you really think we are getting our money’s worth from the Education Trust Fund? Is that money really being used to educate our children, or is it being used for overhead and employees at the state level? With the conversion to Common Core – which costs several fortunes – increasingly more of our children are not proficient in grade level reading or math. And too many of our “academically graduating” seniors have to take remedial reading and math when they first enter college.
Just by gauging the abilities of many employees in the service industry, I’d say we – and them – are being cheated. Young people are completely dependent on technology and are not able to think on their own. When our electrical grid goes down they will be totally unable to function. I’m so glad I remember my addition, subtraction and multiplication tables. I’m glad I can go to a library and find old “how-to” books if I need to learn something basic.
Improvements are fine, but we need to be prepared at many levels. Please voice your concerns at the local AND the state levels. The main job of parents is to help their children be ready for an adulthood better than they have.
Until next week.