Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has vetoed a bill to make it easier to fully fund K-12 education by lowering the bar for what’s considered full funding.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jay Wasson, reinstates a 5 percent growth cap on Missouri’s foundation formula, shrinking the underfunded amount to about $140 million. Congress says the formula is currently underfunded by about $550 million, while Nixon said it’s underfunded by $456 million.
The original formula, created in 2005, was written with the 5 percent cap in place, but the Legislature opted to remove it in 2009 when the state expected an additional $75 million more in revenue from casinos, Wasson previously told the News Tribune.
But the additional revenue never came to be, and the formula has grown exponentially. Every time the state puts more money into it, the formula grows, making it “impossible to fully fund,†he said.
Wasson’s motivation behind creating the bill was to save the formula. If it keeps growing unchecked, he thinks they’ll have to write a new formula.
Legislators passed the bill overwhelmingly in late April. They maintain the formula has ballooned to an amount they’ll never be able to fund. An unfunded formula also pushes back the date all schools would receive state aid for their early childhood education programs.
Currently, fully accredited schools like Jefferson City Public Schools do not receive state aid for their free-and-reduced-lunch pre-school students unless the formula is fully funded.
With the cap, Wasson said they could reach the fully funded amount in a couple years.
Nixon has expressed his opposition to the bill from the start and wants the Legislature to sustain his veto.
“There’s still a lot of work to do to make sure high quality education is presented to every Missouri student,†Nixon said in a Wednesday news conference. “Cheapening the formula would break the promise we made to schools. It’s a policy I cannot and will not support.â€
Legislators have criticized Nixon’s comments by asking why he has never proposed a fully funded formula in his budget. Nixon’s budget included an additional $85 million for the foundation formula, while the Legislature settled on about $70 million more.
Nixon said he would not bow to “lectures†from the General Assembly and punched back, saying they’ve passed numerous tax cuts that will cut into the state’s revenue, forcing him to make future cuts in the budget.
Local schools have mixed feelings about the 5 percent cap and say it presents a double-edged sword. They don’t want to lose potential aid, but they also want to receive funding for early childhood.
Jefferson City Public Schools has been relying on federal aid, the district’s foundation and Scholastic to fund the Southwest Early Childhood Center, according to Chief Financial Officer Jason Hoffman.
If the formula was fully funded, they could appropriate the additional dollars to more pre-school classrooms. Hoffman said they turn away about half the students who would qualify for the program.
With the cap, JCPS could see $5.1 million less annually if the formula was fully funded. But Hoffman along with other districts doubt the formula will ever be fully funded in its current state.
Nixon ascertains it could be.
“The bottom line is, we should fund early childhood education but shouldn’t be at expense of funding public education at amount that we’re required to do,†he said.
The bill will go back to the General Assembly for a vote, and Wasson previously said the Legislature should be able to override the veto easily.