Georgia lawmakers examine changing state K-12 school funding

ATLANTA (AP) — The leader of a state legislative committee that's looking at how Georgia funds K-12 public schools promised on Friday that nothing “dire and ominous” would come from any possible changes.

Nearly 40 years after then-Gov. Joe Frank Harris signed the Quality Basic Education formula into law, Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan told members of a Senate committee that it was time to consider whether changes were needed.

“QBE was done 40-plus years ago,” the Carrollton Republican said. "The way we educate our children has changed in that time period and what this committee is to look at is are we allocating the resources to the areas of education that are most appropriate today."

The move comes at what, in some ways, is a good time for Georgia's $10 billion funding formula. The state has fully funded the formula for four of the last five years after 16 years in which it imposed austerity cuts each year. The formula is used to calculate how much money the state should provide each of Georgia's 181 school districts to give them enough money to provide a good education for 1.7 million students. Over the 16 years, the state would provide only a portion of the entire amount, saying it had to cut back to balance the state budget.

But there are continuing issues with the QBE formula. It provides only a small fraction of what districts spend to buy and operate school buses. Other costs besides employee salaries are rarely adjusted for inflation. The state, for example allocates $150 per teacher to pay for what is supposed to be eight sick days. When the formula was written, schools largely relied on textbooks, while they now increasingly rely on electronic materials. And Georgia has yet to fully funded a previous upgrade in the number of school counselors per...