Teacher pay, school funding set for robust state debate
ATLANTA -- The next chapter in school funding and teacher pay will open at the state Capitol in January, when Gov. Nathan Deal and lawmakers decide what to do with a report that recommends controversial changes to education policy.
To start with, there's the $258 million the Governor's Education Reform Commission wants the state to add to the K-12 education budget for the fiscal year that will start in July 2017. And it wants to follow that as soon as it can thereafter with another $209 million.
That's more significant than a rounding error in an appropriation that's above $8.5 billion. Bibb County school Superintendent Curtis Jones is among those who thinks it is beneficial, but falls short.
"I don't think that it still gets us to where we need to be, and that is, what does it truly cost to educate a child in Georgia?" Jones said.
Bibb would get roughly $6 million more if Deal and the Legislature add that $467 million, according to the commission.
In Houston, the hike would come to some $9 million. All the other counties around Bibb would get less than $1.4 million.
The cash would come according to a new formula that divvies up state money among school districts by student, replacing a complicated calculation that takes into account things such as class size.
Under the new formula, a student would be worth a base of nearly $2,400 each to their district, and would carry even more funds for any of several categories they fit into. English language learners, gifted students, K-3 students, special education students, and students from poor families, among others would each attract more dollars.
"It is refreshing to have a funding formula that recognizes that students with certain characteristics, such as students who are economically disadvantaged, cost more to educate," said Baldwin County school Superintendent Noris Price via e-mail. She was among the education administrators, business people, lawmakers and others that Deal named to the panel when he created it earlier this year.
She also said the new formula gives districts real flexibility and control over how they spend their money.
And Price said she commends the funding recommendations -- with a caveat.
"The $258 million does not make up for austerity cuts, but it gets us closer to where we need to be in providing a quality education to all students," she wrote. "Of course, I would have preferred to have had the austerity cuts fully restored."
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, an Atlanta think tank, has been critical of Georgia's going for years without paying as much cash into education as the state's own formula demands. The result, it has said, are structural cuts at schools that are hard to fix, such as larger class sizes and fewer programs.
But the commission did not start by figuring out how much it costs to educate a child, said Claire Suggs, senior education policy analyst at the institute.
"They said, 'How can we redistribute the money that we have?' '' said Suggs.
The cost of educating a student is still a big question that's out there, she said. "We don't really actually know what it would take to get students to these much higher standards that we have now."
WHAT ABOUT TEACHERS?
Another problem Deal told the commission to tackle is teachers, or rather, how to attract and keep good ones in the classroom.
It's a profession that doesn't have the best reputation -- bad enough that one of the commission recommendations is to start a media campaign to promote the positive aspects of teaching.
But what might go further than ads to help is a pay bump.
"We wanted to make sure that we state clearly that we think that teachers deserve to be paid more," said Pam Williams, Georgia's 2011 Teacher of the Year, who chaired the commission's subcommittee on teacher recruitment, retention and compensation.
The commission said the state should set up guidance to help each school district set up its own pay scales for new teachers. All of the new models would have teacher "effectiveness" as one component, but they could also take into account experience and consider bonuses for teachers headed to hard-to-staff schools or in high-demand subjects like math and science.
That "effectiveness" has been the subject of some criticism from some teachers groups. They argue that what teachers can do depends much on the raw material that comes through their classroom doors.
Some children come in scoring high, leaving little room for improvement. Others are so far behind, it's hard to make progress. Advocates have also argued that if the plan means teachers will be paid on how well their students do on standardized tests, that amounts to moving in a bad direction, doubling down pressure on high-stakes tests.
In Bibb County, there's a large turnover of people who leave teaching during their first five years, Jones said. Sometimes the reason is pay, and sometimes it's working conditions. And not all of it is under the district's control.
The pay idea in some ways is exciting, he said, but in some ways troubling.
What's exciting is that the county could set pay according to its own priorities.
On the other hand, just days after the commission issued its recommendations, Jones read an article about a Fulton County pilot program that allows it to boost pay by up to $20,000 for teachers who get the best results in the lowest-performing schools.
"Sounds great. They have it based on research, ... so I think it has merit," said Jones.
And indeed, some districts already top up teacher pay with a local supplement above the state pay scale. Bibb's most veteran and trained teachers can get a supplement of almost $5,600.
But $20,000 would be mighty steep in a lot of places.
"You end up creating an educational system then that is going to potentially be varied throughout the state, and therefore not giving the same outcomes that we'd like for all students," Jones said.
This story was originally published November 27, 2015 at 9:52 PM with the headline "Teacher pay, school funding set for robust state debate ."