The Senate is warming to a new funding means for advanced courses allowing high school students to earn college credits. But the upper chamber has still only offered 70 percent of the funding calculated under a model in use for decades.
A Senate PreK-12 Education Appropriations Committee offer Thursday provides $418 million in the form of a categorical grant to school districts. That’s more than $175 million less than the House wants to fund.
Sen. Danny Burgess, the Senate PreK-12 Appropriations Committee Chair, said the Senate offered approximately 80% of the funding to school districts that would have been generated under the current structure for all accelerated academic programs.
That includes funding for Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) credits.
He gave lengthy remarks at a joint meeting with House and Senate appropriators on his committee’s proposal.
“At this time, we are simply trying to align this new categorical with the requirements that are in current statute, and that was the Senate rationale in that approach,” the Zephyrhills Republican said.
In a lengthy social media post, Burgess further explained the rationale.
“To be clear, the budget originally passed by the Senate did not reduce or eliminate funding for these important courses,” Burgess posted.
“To the contrary, it continued to provide significantly enhanced funding to cover class and testing costs, as well as bonuses for teachers whose students pass course exams. We drafted our original proposal to respond to district requests by providing flexibility schools have repeatedly asked for, and under that proposal, 54 of 67 counties would have actually received increased funding.”
But the Senate remains on the short end of offers for the courses. The House on Wednesday proposed fully funding the program’s $596 million in the form of an Academic Acceleration Options Supplement. That would preserve spending but structurally change how the number is developed.
The House plan effectively would end an add-on weighted model that ties funding to enrollment and student performance and has been in place for decades. But to assuage fears of monetary threats to the advanced programs, the House budgeted the same number of total dollars to be spent this year.
“We heard from concerned parents across the state, met with numerous Superintendents and School Board members, and we listened,” Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, a Fort Myers Republican chairing the House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee, told Florida Politics.
Importantly, one significant difference is that the Senate does not intend to include dual enrollment courses in its budget. Those are courses taken at colleges by high school students and covered by public funding. “Those courses are mainly covered by postsecondary institutions,” Burgess posted.
Burgess said the Senate will go along with shifting to a Florida Education Finance Program grant as well to avoid confusion.
“This aligns the new categorical with current statute, which only requires districts to spend 80% of the funds earned from these accelerated programs on the programs that generated the funding.”
As of Thursday at 5 p.m., haggling between the House and Senate committee ceased and was kicked to the next level, leaving the significant difference between the chambers unresolved. Now, that must be negotiated between Senate Appropriations Chair Ed Hooper, a Clearwater Republican, and House Budget Chair Lawrence McClure, a Dover Republican.
–Jacob Ogles, Florida Politics
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