Commissioner's Newsletter
| MEMORANDUM
DATE: January 27, 2003 TO: School Administrators FROM: D. Kent King RE: Potential Fiscal Year 2003 Withholdings You have heard much discussion about a significant shortfall in the current fiscal year’s state budget. You have also heard Governor Holden discuss that he probably cannot continue to protect elementary and secondary education if he has to withhold enough to make up for the shortfall. We recently prepared a simulation of the potential impact of withholding $259 million from elementary and secondary education in FY03. We ran the simulation by withholding the same percentage of funds from the basic state aid formula and line 14, transportation aid, remedial reading aid and gifted aid. Since the possible withholding of funds from the “categoricals” of special education and vocational education have the potential to create “supplant” or “match” issues for local school districts, we did not apply the withholdings to them. Also, since the FY03 Career Ladder appropriation has already been distributed, we could not apply the withholdings to that program. Governor Holden has proposed securitization of some of the tobacco settlement money as a way to avoid withholdings. Other ideas may be proposed. In sharing this information with legislators, I have tried to communicate that it is a very critical situation for local school districts and that a quick resolution is important because districts have very little time left in this year. Governor Holden has certainly protected K-12 education funding. I also believe the members of the General Assembly do not want to hurt public elementary and secondary education. We are hopeful that an acceptable solution can be found. |
Simulation report (.pdf file.) or Simulation
report (ASCII *.txt file.) |
