11/13/1996 BOARD OF SELECTMEN Executive Session (4)

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SANDWICH SCHOOL FINANCE A Report for the Sandwich Public Schools The Comnissioner'3 Absent deport At the time of the conference committee, NiBAE argued that there was sufficient funding both to provide inflation aid and to g et all school districts to foundation levels by FY 2000, the final year of the reform.. Indeed, MBAE resisted supporting a bill that didn t have enough funding to reach these twin goals. The law as passed included a compromise. The Commissioner of Education was to run cost simulations of the reform law with and without inflation aid and report the results to the legislature and the public by March, 1994. The Commissioner was to report whether g� the fu ndin called for in the law was sufficient to get low spending districts to the found a g tion and, if extra funds were available, to recommend whether they should be used to bring low-spending endin g districts to foundation at an earlier date or to provide inflation aid to high ,= � P s endin districts. No such report was filed. f� a s Had this re ort been filed in timely fashion,the legislature might have debated its finding P s F; and considered the possibility of including inflation aid in the FY 90 distributions. It is possible that this could stiffl be done, but time is running out(as this is written, there are only 2112 months until. the Department is required to submit FY 95 aid numbers to the ! legislature, and it would take a change in the statute to have inflation aid included in the .; leg 7 g distribution). r z InflationAid's Impact on Sandwich tJ�j i LI p The impact of the inflation aid provisions in the House bill are spelled out in the table be- : T low. For sun lici ,the table contains information onlyfor FY 90 and FY 99. In FY 96, y; P t Sandwich would receive$893,000 in inflation aid. There would be no other changes, so i' F Sandwich schools would spend $893,000 more than would otherwise be the case. Total spending would rise b 9% over the prior year instead of 3.5%, per-pupil spending would �_. P g �' r, rise 2.4% instead of falling by 2.8%v, spending would be 8.1% above foundation levels in- stead of 2.7% above. «k i± j: By FY 99 Sandwich would receive some$1.8 million more in total state aid under the in r; cation aid formula. Since one ear's inflation aid is folded in the next year's base aid, most r y } of the difference shows up in base aid. With the help of this extra assistance, Sandwich would not be required to make additional local contributions above and beyond the growth factor;town taxpayers would save $217,000 in FY 99. Also, the higher base aid and infla- tion aid amounts would remove the need for overburden and foundation aid. All told, spending in FY 99 would be $1.5 million higher with inflation aid,or$424 per pupil. Spending would be 7.9% above the foundation, instead of right at it. With inflation aid, inflation--adjusted, per-pupil spending would be the same as in FY 95, instead of falling substantial) below FY 95 levels. y Page 18