A debate over school funding is brewing in Louisiana as school superintendents call for an overall increase in per-student dollars while education policymakers seek a more limited boost. Meanwhile, some lawmakers say the state’s entire approach to school-funding needs a fresh look.

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education last week proposed giving schools roughly $30 million extra in state aid to account for the rising cost of insurance, retirement systems, utilities and other operating expenses. Even with the boost, officials say the state still would end up spending less on education next fiscal year due to declining enrollment, which determines how much money schools get.

While superintendents say they welcome any extra state money, some argue that the baseline amount the state gives each school district — about $4,000 per student — is long overdue for an increase. The Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, which notes that the per-student amount has increased by less than $600 in the past 20 years, wanted a 1.375% boost that would have cost about $40 million.

But as Gov. Jeff Landry and the Republican-controlled Legislature look to rein in spending and lower taxes, observers say that any substantial hike in per-student funding is highly unlikely. Instead, lawmakers such as Senate President Cameron Henry say they want to better understand how schools spend the roughly $4.3 billion the state provides for K-12 education before they consider a raise.

“We need to figure out where that goes before we add anything else to it,” he said last month.

The Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools recently launched a review of the state’s education funding system, which will be paid for with private money and led by former state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek. Caroline Roemer, the association’s executive director, said one goal is to justify requests for additional state aid by determining how much it actually costs to educate each student.

“I think to just say, ‘We need more dollars,’ is not good enough,” she said. “You need to back it up with a rationale and data that shows what you need more dollars to do.”

School funding boost

The state education board determines how much money to give schools, but the Legislature must approve the formula. This year, the board opted against asking for an overall increase.

Instead, it proposed hiking just the amount that schools get for operating expenses, such as fuel, from $100 to $147 per student. The 47% increase reflects the amount of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, since the state last increased this funding stream in 2008.

BESE member Kevin Berken, who chairs the board’s finance committee, called it a reasonable request that will result in net savings because the state’s declining student population is expected to reduce overall education spending by $42 million.

“We believe this is the formula that the Legislatures can get behind,” he said, “and should get behind.”

The board did not request funding for specific initiatives that it has in the past, such as student tutoring and extra pay for certain hard-to-fill positions, because Landry included those efforts in his proposed state budget. The board also did not ask for one-time teacher pay raises because a proposed constitutional amendment, which will go before voters in May, would free up money for permanent raises.

BESE also declined to seek a higher per-student amount, which is the biggest portion of state aid schools receive and the part with the fewest spending restrictions.

In the past, the state raised that baseline funding by as much as 2.75% annually to keep up with inflation, but the annual raises mostly stopped after the 2008 Great Recession. The amount has increased just twice since then, to its current $4,015 per student.

Doris Voitier, the longtime superintendent of the St. Bernard Parish school system who helped develop the state’s school-funding model, said funding was intended to keep up with inflation. Instead, costs have risen sharply — including salaries and benefits, property insurance, building materials and technology for students — but per-student state aid has barely budged.

“It is woefully inadequate at this point,” she said. “If that per-pupil (amount) had been increasing in the way that the original writers of this formula intended, I don’t think we would be in this position.”

But state officials said the Legislature is more likely to support increasing aid for specific purposes, such as tutoring or operating costs, than boosting the baseline amount schools get.

State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said lawmakers told him in recent years not to ask for more state money because schools received billions in federal aid during the pandemic. The COVID money has since expired, but lawmakers have not expressed a desire to make up for that by boosting state aid, he added.

“I haven’t had a single legislator tell me that,” he said.

Revisiting the formula

At the core of the debate is Louisiana’s system for determining how much money each school system receives — a formula called the “Minimum Foundation Program,” or MFP.

The formula was developed in the 1990s as many states were updating their funding systems — partly in response to litigation — to account for the huge disparities between poor and wealthy communities, which have far more local tax revenue to put into their public schools. Louisiana’s formula determines how much it costs to educate each student, giving schools extra money to meet the needs of students who have disabilities, are still learning English, are homeless or come from low-income families. The formula then calculates how much of the financial burden local communities should bear, with the state contributing more to poorer parishes with smaller tax bases.

Under the formula, Louisiana’s highest-poverty districts receive about 17% more state aid per student than wealthier districts, according to an analysis by EdTrust, a national group that advocates for more resources for underserved students. However, when local revenue is factored in, wealthier districts end up with about 8% more total funding per student.

Tramelle Howard, EdTrust’s Louisiana state director, said the formula’s power to close the gap between districts and ensure schools can meet students’ needs depends on how much money the state puts into the formula.

“Those provisions only reach their full potential if the base funding is adequate,” he said in an email.

What counts as “adequate” funding is a perennial question. The Legislature established a task force a decade ago to study it, and now the charter school group’s review is taking up the question as it tries to calculate how much it currently costs to educate students in Louisiana.

BESE President Simone Champagne said the board plans to wait for the report’s conclusions before requesting any future per-student aid increases. She added that she strongly supports any re-examination of the funding formula.

“The MFP hasn’t been looked at for 30 years,” she said. “So we think that’s a wonderful idea.”