Educators: New law would sap money from high poverty districts

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By MARGERY BECK / The Associated Press

OMAHA — Steve Joel is giving up.

The Grand Island Public Schools superintendent says he’s been stumped by a new state law he fears will cost the district millions of dollars in state funding next school year to help teach the district’s poorest students.

The problem, Joel said, is a segment of a new school funding law that would give districts money next year for each elementary and middle school student in the free and reduced-priced lunch program that is also in a class of 20 or fewer.

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A crowded mixed-grade ELL class is in session at the Walnut middle school in Grand Island, Neb., Friday, Oct. 5, 2007. A new state school funding law that would give districts money next year for elementary and middle school students hinges on having classes of 20 students or less. That may cost the district millions of dollars in state funding because not enough teachers or building space are available to reduce the number of students per class to below 20. (AP)

A crowded mixed-grade ELL class is in session at the Walnut middle school in Grand Island, Neb., Friday, Oct. 5, 2007. A new state school funding law that would give districts money next year for elementary and middle school students hinges on having classes of 20 students or less. That may cost the district millions of dollars in state funding because not enough teachers or building space are available to reduce the number of students per class to below 20. (AP)

The Grand Island district simply doesn’t have enough teachers or building space to get their classes under 20, he said.

“We didn’t want to change teachers, change schedules, disrupt educational and parental continuity ... so, we’re going to take a risk and hope that state senators are willing to listen to the hardships that this has caused,” Joel said.

Joel said communities with high immigrant populations, like Grand Island, are hit especially hard, since the majority of English-learning students fall within poverty demographics. About 22 percent of students in the Grand Island district are English-language learners, he said.

Districts have until Nov. 1 to get class size estimates to the state.

“I don’t feel like when we have to try to meet this law by getting poverty kids and ELA kids in classes under 20 that that’s the right thing to do, because I think it’s segregating,” Joel said. “I don’t believe that’s legislative intent, but I think it’s discriminatory.”

Grand Island is not the only school district sweating the possible consequences of the new law.

Nebraska’s largest public school district, Omaha Public Schools, figures it stands to lose at least $3 million next year, said superintendent John Mackiel.

The Nebraska Department of Education is interpreting the law to read that students must remain in a single classroom for 50 percent of the school day to qualify for the small classroom enrollment money, Mackiel said. That would exclude every middle school student in the state, he said.

“Anybody who’s ever gone to middle school knows that’s the time (students) ... are in approximately eight different classrooms throughout the course of a day,” Mackiel said. “Whether or not those classes are of 20 or less is set aside in the state’s interpretation. As a result of moving from English to social sciences, that automatically eliminates $3 million of potential state aid, whether we have small class sizes or not.”

Russ Inbody, the state Education Department’s administrator of school finance and organizational services, confirmed Mackiel’s analysis of the department’s interpretation.

“The statute, in our opinion, is pretty clear that it says ’in a classroom.’ It doesn’t say ’classrooms,’ “ Inbody said. “I think that was a technical error.”

Sen. Ron Raikes of Lincoln, chairman of the Legislature’s Education Committee, said that was not the intent of the law.

“There seems to be confusion on exactly how we implement this,” Raikes said. “That is something that we’re working on.”

In Lexington, where nearly 70 percent of students are living in low-income households, most elementary classes are under 20 students, superintendent Todd Chessmore said. But the district does not have enough building space to get middle school classes under 20. Even if it did, Chessmore said, the cost this year to hire eight more teachers to lower class sizes would be about $500,000 — and the state doesn’t begin allocating money to cover such expenses until next year.

“It really, in my mind, takes away from local control,” Chessmore said. “Moneywise, we think we’re going to come out OK. But that’s the other thing — we really don’t know. We won’t know until we’re certified whether this has been good for us or not. Nobody knows.”

The fear expressed by school districts is quite an about-face from educators’ initial reaction to the measure, which was lauded as a recognition of the need to focus on students with educational challenges, such as poverty and a lack of English skills.

Only as districts delved deeper and began asking questions about the law’s impact did concern arise, several superintendents said.

“I think the bill came out fairly quickly, and not a lot of people had full knowledge of what it’s full content was,” Joel said. “I’m not sure that a school district like Grand Island, that is a very low-spending school district, can get penalized and people not say, ‘Hey, that’s not the intent of the law.“’

Several superintendents said they would like to see more discussion, and all that spoke to The Associated Press expressed some concern that they won’t know until February — when state aid for the next school year is certified — exactly how much state money they’ll be getting.

Inbody said he knows many district are fearful of losing state funding, “but we don’t think they should be.”

In fact, Inbody said he and other department officials have been meeting with school districts in recent weeks to assure them they will not lose state aid over the small classroom allowance issue.

But everyone seems to agree that there are no solid estimates on what schools will get in the next school year. That’s because the state’s complex funding structure relies on local property valuations to determine how much money schools will need from the state.

Inbody said that districts are expected to be credited about $1,600 for each student living in poverty that’s in a class of fewer than 20 — but noted that if a district’s valuation goes up, it will see less than that.

“I guess we’ll know in February 2008,” Inbody said.

Raikes said he is confident the school districts, Education Department and state lawmakers can work out any kinks and interpretation problems with the law this spring when the new legislative session begins.

“If you’ve got legitimate issues, let’s work on it, because quite frankly, I’ve never been superintendent of a school district; I’ve never been principal of a school building; I’ve never been a classroom teacher in a K-12 district,” Raikes said. “So I’m no expert on the circumstance that those folks deal with.”