- Oklahoma
The state appropriation for common education for FY 2013 remained flat from FY 2012. Despite growth in the number of students being served, expenditures per student have dropped 20.3% since 2009 (Perry 2013). In FY 2013, education agencies received only small increases after having $253 million funding cut since 2009 (Oklahoma Executive Budget 2013). In early 2013, the Oklahoma state superintendent of schools requested an additional appropriation of $37.7 million to supplement state-mandated health insurance coverage, reading proficiency and remediation programs, formula increases, and student data technology. Only $8.5 million for health insurance was approved (Oklahoma [End Page 278] State Department of Education 2013). The share of the total appropriations for common education has fallen to 34.2% of the state budget—the lowest since 2000 (McKean 2013). The 2013 budget continued the trend of fewer dollars per student, and the year ended the same way it began—with schools trying to find a way to do more with less.
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• The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Ed Jobs money that had provided a temporary source of funds for schools ended, and many districts feared a looming funding cliff in 2013.
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• In November of 2012, State Question 766, which eliminated the assessment of tax on intangible and personal property for locally assessed and centrally assessed companies, was passed in the general election. The effects of that vote will be felt December 2013 when midyear adjustments in formula allocations are calculated. The Oklahoma Tax Commission estimates that the fiscal effects of SQ 766 will result in a $50 million negative net impact on common schools and career technology centers. In preparation for the implementation of this new law, schools are struggling to accurately prepare budget estimates, as this revenue stream will not be calculated until late in the year—long after district budgets are in place.
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• Senate Bill 1443 extended the moratorium on penalties—removal of accreditation—for failure of school districts to meet requirements of class size, library and media expenditures, and textbook purchases.
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• State-mandated programs remain underfunded: Common Core implementation is in place with no additional funds, Achieving Classroom Excellence remediation is funded at 30% of the level required under the law, and the Reading Sufficiency Act to end social promotion of third graders has been entirely defunded for the past two years.
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• Teacher Leader Effectiveness (TLE), the new teacher evaluation system in Oklahoma, has been mandated with inadequate funding (likely greater than 50% underfunded). The TLE system presents a fundamental change in teacher evaluation in that teacher effectiveness will be based in part on student performance. Additionally, teachers who score at the lowest of five levels of the TLE for two consecutive years will be terminated. Though the program requires extensive training and paperwork, additional funding for implementation is not available. However, failure to successfully conform to the TLE program will be grounds for the state to withhold aid until the district is compliant (Oklahoma State Department of Education 2013).
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• The Oklahoma State Department of Education initiated a controversial and costly school and district evaluation system in 2013. The objective was to simplify school evaluations by abandoning the API numerical formula and utilizing an A–F school report card rating system. Researchers from [End Page 279] the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University conducted an independent study and found the A–F grading system to be seriously flawed due to letter grades that are unclear and not comparable among schools (Eger 2013). House Bill 1658 was enacted on May 24, 2013, to amend the system to lessen the impact on the lowest-achieving schools. No other revisions have been made at this point.
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• Insurance benefits, required under law to be paid on behalf of teachers and support staff, are routinely underfunded by the legislature. However, the recently passed House Bill 3056 requires that the State School Board of Education fully fund the Flexible Benefit Allowance (FBA) if there is no line item appropriation from the legislature. In 2013, the legislature approved a one-time supplemental request to the budget that completed the funding for FBA to schools.
Looking Ahead
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• The universal budget cut...