Background Information On Per Pupil Spending

It isn't the governor who proposed the $248 and $252 - that's current law, agreed to by Governor Thompson and the Legislature. Every budget, through a statutory formula, provides for increases in the per pupil spending level that are designed to account for inflation and the increasing costs that schools face, from insurance to utilities to maintenance. That's the amount that schools use in putting together their budgets, which has already been done for this coming school year.

Therefore, if those numbers are reduced, school boards will have to revisit their budgets and cut spending that had already been approved. Since by far the biggest cost is personnel, and you can't change things like utility costs, the result will be layoffs for significant numbers of teachers who are already under contract for the fall, which would add to unemployment costs.

In the 1993-95 legislative session, the Senate added to the budget bill (SB 44, Act 16) an automatic increase to per pupil spending that was later confirmed by the Assembly during the adoption of the budget bill (after it went through a conference committee). The Senate vote to include the provision was 17-16, with Roessler, Cowles, Darling, Ellis, Lasee, Schultz and Zien voting in favor. In the Assembly the vote was 53-45, with Freese, Gard, Green, Harsdorf, Jensen, Kaufert, Kreibich, Lazich, Musser, Nass, Ott, Owens, Underheim, Vrakas, Walker, and Ward voting to support the automatic increase.

Posted June 20, 2005