If you want to understand what's been happening with public school funding in NC, this is a good place to start. Combine state & federal funding, and separate expenditures on employee benefits. Everything else is lower every year since 2012 than any since at least 2004. #ncpol
Why combine state and federally funded spending? These numbers from the Statistical Profile aren't inflation-adjusted but show Obama-era stimulus plugged a revenue hole in 2010-2012. NCGA often implies 2011 was past norm but inflation-adj state $$ was down ~5% from *2004*. #ncpol
Why separate benefits? Secure pension benefits are vital and a lot of other places have not done a good job at it. What can be seen from the chart is how much it has been paid for at the expense of the rest of the school system rather than as an added cost of operating it.
The tradeoff is directly visible in personnel counts. 2009, 2011, and 2020 all had very similar total enrollment (~1.410M). But state & federally-funded teacher count dropped from 92k to 90k to 87k. State and federally-funded TAs dropped from 27k to 24k to 19k. #ncpol #nced
This isn't an accident and it's not news to lawmakers. The allotment ratios were the same 2009-2011, but 2010-2013 local systems were required to return a percentage of their state funds (4.03% in 2011). In 2014 this was stopped but allotments were permanently cut in grades 4-12.
Nor have salaries done any better than inflation, even on average. Average 2020 teacher pay from state sources (excluding local supplements) was lower than 2011, adjusting for inflation. 54150-4772=49378 vs 46791-3478=43313 -- $50737 in 2020 dollars.
The difference in inflation-adjusted state and federal per-pupil funding for everything OTHER than benefits, multiplied by total enrollment, is ~$480M between 2011 and 2020. Compared to 2004, it's ~$772M. To 2009, ~$1.24B. PER YEAR.
The Leandro recommendations overlap partially with this but in many ways are additive, which makes sense since the equity problem addressed by Leandro predates GOP control. This contextualizes the $650M and $850M price tags in year one and year two of the plan...
Funding Leandro would address critical issues of access and equity to finally provide disadvantaged kids what the state's founding document promises to all. But it would also not otherwise return even 2004 levels of service. It is literally the least we can do. #LeadWithLeandro
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