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New School Year Brings Steep Cuts in State Funding for Schools
New School Year Brings Steep Cuts in State Funding for Schools
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding than last year in at least 37 states, and in at least 30 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels – often far below. These cuts are attributable, in part, to the failure of the federal government to extend emergency fiscal aid to states and school districts and the failure of most states to enact needed revenue increases and instead to balance their budgets solely through spending cuts. The cuts have significant consequences, both now and in the future: They are causing immediate public- and private-sector job loss, and in the long term are likely to reduce student achievement and economic growth.
Our review of budget documents finds that, of 46 states that publish education budget data in a way that allows historic comparisons:
- 37 states are providing less funding per student to local school districts in the new school year than they provided last year.
- 30 states are providing less than they did four years ago..
- 17 states have cut per-student funding by more than 10 percent from pre-recession levels.
- Four states— South Carolina, Arizona, California, and Hawaii — each have reduced per student funding to K-12 schools by more than 20 percent. (These figures, like all the comparisons in this paper, are in inflation-adjusted dollars and focus on the primary form of state aid to local schools.)
State-level K-12 spending cuts of this magnitude have serious consequences for the nation.
Six Ways that States and School Districts Can Make It Easier for Children in Foster Care to Get Free Meals at School
Six Ways that States and School Districts Can Make It Easier for Children in Foster Care to Get Free Meals at School
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 has made it easier for school districts to enroll children who are in foster care for free school meals. [1] Children in foster care are now automatically eligible for free meals regardless of their income (a policy known as “categorical eligibility”).[2] As a result of this change, school districts no longer have to consider the personal income of children in foster care when determining their eligibility for free school meals. [3] Once enrolled based on their foster status, children remain eligible for the full school year even if they leave foster care during the course of the year.
This change will not make many children in foster care newly eligible for free school meals because so few of them have any personal income. But the change in law and the resulting policy changes create new opportunities for states and school districts to enroll children in foster care for free meals more simply and expeditiously.[4] This paper describes six ways that states and school districts can take advantage of those opportunities to better serve children in foster care and their families:
- Directly certify children in foster care for free school meals by matching data from foster care agencies or a court with student data.
- Use the notification that schools receive from child welfare caseworkers or a court of a child’s foster status to certify the child for free school meals.
- Revise school meals applications to reflect the categorical eligibility of children in foster care for free school meals and the potential benefit to the foster family of including children in foster care on the same school meals application as other children in the household.
- Notify foster parents that their children in foster care are eligible for free school meals and explain how to apply for benefits for their foster and non-foster children.
- Maintain certification when a child in foster care changes schools by transferring the certification for free meals to the new school.
- Relieve foster families of paperwork if an application with a child in foster care is selected for verification by obtaining documentation of the child’s foster care status directly from a foster care agency or court (or by allowing foster parents to provide contact information for an appropriate third party who can verify the child’s foster status, such as a social worker).
A Framework for Deficit Reduction: Principles and Cautions
A Framework for Deficit Reduction: Principles and Cautions
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The nation is on an unsustainable fiscal course, and policymakers need to make major changes in policy. As a number of bipartisan panels have recommended over the past year, policymakers should aim to stabilize the debt as a share of the economy (the Gross Domestic Product) so the debt does not rise relentlessly as a share of the economy. That would put the nation on what economists define as a sustainable budget path.
To achieve this goal, policymakers should aim to balance the primary budget — the budget other than interest payments on the debt. As these panels have explained, stabilizing the debt — and avoiding the specter of a debt explosion in future decades — is the key, not balancing the total budget (i.e., the budget including interest payments). As a rough rule of thumb, if the budget excluding interest payments is in balance, then the debt will not grow faster than the economy. That means running total budget deficits of no more than about 3 percent of GDP. [1] In short, balancing the total budget isn’t necessary to put us on a sustainable course and reassure financial markets. Stabilizing the debt is.
Policymakers should meet this goal in a reasonable period of time, but it isn’t necessary to meet it in the next few years. Indeed, it would be unwise to put austerity measures into effect now while the economy is still growing too slowly to bring unemployment down to more normal levels in the next few years. Putting substantial deficit-reduction measures into effect now would cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next year or two by slowing the already inadequate economic growth. Ideally, policymakers would enact legislation this year that begins to take effect once the economy is stronger — probably in fiscal year 2013, not before — and puts us on track to stabilize the debt as a share of GDP by the end of this decade. Doing so would involve very tough choices, both substantively and politically, but meeting that goal would be a huge accomplishment and greatly allay the fears of financial markets. Reducing the deficit more precipitously, however, is neither necessary nor sound as fiscal or economic policy.
Medicaid Block Grant Would Produce Disparate and Inequitable Results Across States
Medicaid Block Grant Would Produce Disparate and Inequitable Results Across States
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Some policymakers, including House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, are considering converting Medicaid to a block grant to produce large federal budget savings. For example, a block-grant proposal that Ryan co-authored last fall would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $180 billion over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). All states would face substantial reductions in federal funding under such a block grant, but some states would likely be hit particularly hard — including states whose current Medicaid expenditure levels are relatively low and states whose expenditures would rise relatively quickly in future years due to demographic, economic, or other factors…
Some Basic Facts on State and Local Government Workers
Some Basic Facts on State and Local Government Workers
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
The public workforce has been the subject of much discussion lately — and, unfortunately, much misinformation. This brief report presents some basic facts about state and local employees: the jobs they perform, how many there are, how their pay compares with pay in the private sector, and how much states and localities — mainly school districts, cities, and counties — spend on pay and benefits.
