New Year, New Budget

Last week, Governor Brown released his proposal for the 2016-2017 California Budget. Although the budget will not be fully implemented until this Summer/Fall (after the legislative process), the current proposal offers a critical glimpse into educational funding during the next fiscal year--especially given Governor Brown's attempts to increase state funding for K-12 public education (mainly, Proposition 30).

If you would like to read and explore the full budget summaries, feel free to do so here:

Governor's Budget - Proposed Budget Summary

Here are some of the key takeaways from the Education section of the 2016-2017 budget and the K-12 Education Summary:

• The total state expenditures for Education in the 2016-2017 fiscal year are approximately $73.8 billion. This represents an approximate 2% increase from 2015-2016 and an approximate 6.5% increase from 2014-2015.

 

Source: 2016-2017 California State Budget. Note: dollar amounts are in thousands.

• Specific funding budgeted for K-12 Education, represents 30.1% of the total state funded budget at an approximate $51.4 billion. When also taking into account federal funding and additional sources of non-state funding, this total increases to roughly $78.7 billion--accounting then for a total of 65.5% of the state's approximate $120 billion self-funded budget.

• K-12 per-pupil spending also sees similar increases. In the 2016-2017 fiscal year, per-pupil spending is estimated at $14,550 (with $10,591 guaranteed under Proposition 98 funds). This represents approximate increases of 2.5% and 6.8% from 2015-2016 and 2014-2015, respectively. 

Source: K-12 Education Budget Summary

• Consolidation of funding for early education through a $1.6 billion early education block grant--with specific attention directed towards promoting programs for low-income and at-risk students and families.

• Increased funding for the the state's Career and Technical Education Incentive Grant--a grant program intended to increase funding for CTE programs within school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools. This grant prioritizes new CTE programs or existing programs facing challenges (i.e. significant drop-out population, significant low-income student population, high unemployment region, etc.).

Even though this proposed budget will likely look very different from the final version that will hopefully be passed by the state legislature in the summer, it nonetheless shows the Governor's continued prioritization of educational funding.

Questions to consider:

• While the 2016-2017 budget shows continued increases in educational funding, what can be done to ensure that those funds are appropriately and effectively allocated and spent?

Disclaimer: state budgeting is a complicated process--especially since it typically includes a variety of funding sources (i.e. federal grants, outside funding, etc.). While I provided links to sources where my numbers were obtained, it is possible that these numbers were not calculated or interpreted correctly. Any suggested corrections and/or revisions to this post will be documented.