Dispute Over State School Funds Resolved

In an abrupt accounting turnaround, Gov. Gray Davis and Democratic lawmakers resolved a brewing dispute over education funding by simply stipulating that 41,000 children won’t show up at California’s public schools next September.

The budgetary revisionism has the impact of freeing $192.7 million for local school districts to spend as they see fit.

The development delighted education lobbyists, who had been griping that Davis’ original $26-billion education spending plan placed too many restrictions on their spending of state money next year.

“It loosens up a whole bunch of dough,” said Kevin Gordon of the California School Boards Assn. The revision, he added, “gives the governor the opportunity to fund programs he wants, and gives local school districts the modest discretion that we want.”

Although some school funding issues remain unresolved, the new enrollment estimate and the money it frees up means that Davis and lawmakers are close to an education deal, always a key part of any budget accord. Governors and legislatures traditionally revise numbers at budget time as they fashion their final deals. And any estimate of future enrollment is a guess. Still, it is rare that numbers are changed so dramatically and so publicly.

“We couldn’t figure where [Davis administration officials] were getting their numbers,” said Gordon. “I don’t know what tea leaves they were reading or smoking.”

Many school districts will use the so-called discretionary money for pay raises for teachers and other employees. Others will use it to hire more employees and buy supplies.

In Davis’ first budget, school spending will rise by more than $2 billion from last year. But the Democratic governor, like his Republican predecessor Pete Wilson, initially irritated school lobbyists by earmarking hundreds of millions of dollars for his vision of how best to improve local schools.

Davis is insisting that most of the new money go to specific programs that he believes will improve student achievement, bring good teachers to problem schools and improve school safety.

“The governor approaches it this way: He supports local control,” said Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante. “But for too long, schools have had local control and it hasn’t worked out. There are some serious needs that need to be addressed today.”

Lawmakers on the joint Senate-Assembly conference committee, trying to come up with more discretionary money for schools, agreed to the new numbers late Tuesday as they tried to strike a compromise on what was shaping up as a fight between Davis and school lobbyists.

“There’s a lot of game-playing going on,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Steve Peace (D-El Cajon).

Moments later, Peace led the other conferees in agreeing that enrollment at California schools will rise 45,000 next year, not the 86,000 that Davis had calculated when he issued his revised budget proposal less than a month ago.

“It’s in the nature of legislatures and governors to tinker with numbers where ever they can,” said John Hein of the California Teachers Assn. “I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. In this instance, I don’t see the downside.”

Money for schools revolves around enrollment, making an accurate pupil count important. But as the Democratic governor drafted his budget, some lawmakers and school lobbyists speculated, the administration used an unrealistically high number for enrollment growth, the effect of which was to limit discretionary money for schools.

Bustamante said the governor’s Department of Finance based its estimate on preliminary numbers supplied by the schools. A more accurate count arrived in recent days as the school year was drawing to a close.

“Look, [Department of Finance officials] base their numbers on numbers they receive,” Bustamante said, insisting that there was no effort to inflate the enrollment projections.

The earlier numbers “were just wrong,” said Department of Finance spokesman Sandy Harrison. Perhaps, he said, new reporting requirements confused some local districts.

“From Finance’s perspective,” Harrison said, “we wanted to make sure any kid in school got funded, so our bias was to include [the higher number]. When we got better numbers, we revised it downward.”

Earlier, the legislative analyst’s office, using similar estimates, had issued a report predicting that there would be 60,000 to 90,000 more students than the 5.6 million now in California public schools.

On Tuesday, however, as education lobbyists and legislators wrangled with Davis, budget conferees cited the latest estimate, based on what they say is a more accurate count, showing that there would be only 45,000 more students next year.

By Wednesday, the administration agreed to several legislators’ proposals to expand schools’ authority to spend money as they see fit.

For example, Davis had earmarked $100 million for school safety, saying that $42.5 million was to hire more high school counselors, $42.5 million was for metal detectors and other safety-related equipment, and $15 million was for schools to write safety plans.

The budget conference committee added to the governor’s school safety categories. Under a tentative agreement, the $100 million can be used for phones in classrooms or to hire police officers on campuses.

“Schools will always want more flexibility,” said Bill Chavez, Sacramento lobbyist for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

He pointed out that Los Angeles schools already have taken security-related steps, including having armed officers on campuses.

In his view, Los Angeles might be able to put school safety money to better use by hiring more counselors and other adults who would be on campus, and by expanding extracurricular programs so more students feel connected to their schools.