Blunt gets a jump on education funding debate

By Marc Powers

Nevada Daily Mail

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Key players in the looming legislative effort to overhaul Missouri's system for funding public schools shared ideas Tuesday during an education summit organized by Gov.-elect Matt Blunt.

Blunt, a Republican who takes office Monday, acknowledged the issue will be difficult to tackle, given the competing interests that stand to gain or lose from a rewrite of the complex formula for distributing state financial support to school districts throughout the state.

Nonetheless, he said he is committed to accomplishing the task in the legislative session that begins today in order to head off a pending court case that claims the existing system provides schools too little money that is unfairly distributed.

"The formula is broken. It cannot withstand a constitutional challenge," Blunt said. "I don't think we should wait for the courts to tell us that."

About four dozen lawmakers, representatives of various education lobbying groups and officials from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education participated in the discussion.

State Sen. Charlie Shields, who led a special legislative committee that studied the issue last year, said a fairer method of distributing education funds could be crafted without additional revenue so long as lawmakers were willing to shift money from richer districts to poorer ones.

"The difficulty in that is you probably could not politically do that," said Shields, R-St. Joseph.

Given the promise of intense political opposition, Shields said the Senate will not pursue such a Robin Hood approach.

Although progress can be made this year toward replacing the education funding formula, which was last rewritten in 1993, Shields said completing the job will be an ongoing effort.

"Going to a new formula will probably require three to four years to phase in, and it will probably require new money in each of those years," Shields said.

Blunt opposes raising taxes for education and said any additional funding must come through savings elsewhere in the state budget.

House Speaker-designee Rod Jetton, R-Marble Hill, said increasing spending won't necessarily fix the problem.

"The question we need to ask is does more money equal a better education?" Jetton said. "I don't hear that question that much, particularly when I talk to educators."

State Rep.-elect Ed Robb, a retired University of Missouri economist who has studied the issue for several years, said the key reason there is such a huge disparity in how much individual districts spend per student is the state's traditional reliance on local property taxes to fund education.

"The problem with the property tax system is property is no longer the major source of wealth in this state, and it is not equally distributed around the state," said Robb, R-Columbia.

Robb proposes eliminating the property tax as a major source of education funding and imposing a statewide income tax in its place.

Blunt said at this point he is open to all ideas and isn't rejecting any out of hand, save higher taxes. He was unsure if a definitive education proposal will be ready for inclusion in his first State of the State address, which he will deliver later this month.