• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Task Force Tackles School Funding Formula: Members Examine Overhaul for Quality Basic Education

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Harry Franklin, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Ga.

Mar. 28--The state's Quality Basic Education program is outdated and should be replaced, according to the chairman of the Governor's Education Finance Task Force, a 23-member panel that met in Columbus on Monday and is working to do just that.

"QBE has been tweaked so much," said C. Dean Alford, who chairs the panel. "I think QBE is outdated."

Basically, QBE is the formula used to determine how much money school districts receive from the state.

Alford, president/CEO of a Conyers-based firm, and other task force members held a five-hour public session Monday in the Columbus State University Cunningham Center that drew about 100 people, including State School Superintendent Kathy Cox, other educators, consultants and people interested in financing public education.

"The complexity of QBE rivals the Internal Revenue Service (tax) Code," Alford said. "What happens, it's difficult to administer, difficult to manage well as to how we want services targeted to specific areas."

Cox agrees.

"It needs to change," she said. "We can tweak it, which we've been doing. Fundamentally it needs to be overhauled. We need a simpler formula people can understand. It's terribly hard to interpret QBE. I jokingly say there's about four people in the state who understand it, and they go back to 1985."

That's the year the QBE formula was implemented by the state.

"It's a huge task, but it's doable," she said. "In the past, if you asked the goal of a system, you would get many answers. We know we need a 100 percent graduation rate by 2014. Everybody needs to be doing math at grade level."

Alford said the plan is to replace QBE with a new program called Investing in Educational Excellence, a new approach to providing resources for education. The proposals under study take a business approach, calling for a return on investment of state resources for education.

More students to come

Working with consultants, including some with IBM, the plan is to develop an education financing model that needs and resources can be plugged into. The panel has set up five committees that focus on specific areas and meet more frequently than the whole panel. They have worked for 18 months and hope to complete their work and make recommendations to Gov. Sonny Perdue by the end of this year or in early 2007.

Alford said the governor would then present his recommendations for a new or overhauled program to the Georgia General Assembly, which would decide whether to implement the plan. It should be ready for either the 2007 or 2008 legislative sessions, said Alford, noting they don't want to rush things.

Committees and the full panel are looking at best practices at the elementary, middle and high school levels and at plans for an education cost model yet to be set up. Meetings also have been held with education groups such as the Georgia Association of Educators, Georgia Association of Educational Leaders, Georgia School Boards Association and Professional Association of Georgia Educators.

Cox said developing a plan acceptable to everyone interested in public education is challenging, adding, "I think we'll be very surprised that people will be on the same page."

On another topic, Cox was asked about how the State Department of Education is working with educators in Columbus and surrounding counties to prepare for rapid growth at Fort Benning and other military installations due to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission decisions.

She said the state needs to help local systems deal with sudden growth issues. Under today's funding program, the state provides funds for school construction when a school district can show it already has enough students to justify state money to build or expand schools.

In a situation such as Muscogee and other area school districts face, with large numbers of additional troops and their families expected to move into the community over the next four or five years, she said the state needs to provide construction funds so school systems will be ready for the additional students expected. School districts also are looking for substantial funds from the federal government.

She also said her department will help local school districts with teacher recruitment, since it may be challenging to find qualified teachers to work in the 10 schools Muscogee plans to build in the next few years and in schools that will be expanded.

"This is an unprecedented event," Cox said. "These are special circumstances. School systems in Georgia can't do this alone. I fully support your superintendent here and the regional superintendents that this needs to be a priority. What the Muscogee County School District has done is bring us into the loop. They've met with the governor's staff. He's clearly on top of this with them. We can't let this drop off the radar screen."

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Ga.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NYSE:IBM,

Source: Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

More News in this Category