The Joint Budget Committee spent a full day setting figures for the Department of Education's non-school-finance programs, approving dozens of reductions and restructuring measures amid a serious budget shortfall; the only contested vote was a 3-2 split on BEST cash grants, with Senators Kirkmeyer and Amabile objecting to a reduction from $140 million to $107.4 million, while the committee also voted to draft legislation eliminating or modifying the social studies assessment and to consolidate a $31 million Healthy School Meals repayment with elimination of future State Education Fund transfers into a single bill.
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Senator Kirkmeyer argued the figure should stay at $140 million, stating 'I don't want to cut it anymore. We already cut it last year,' and questioned why only $105 million was awarded when $119 million was appropriated. Senator Mabrey [UNCLEAR SPELLING] raised inequity concerns, describing Jackson County schools that previously had raw sewage in hallways and lacked heat despite only 30 frost-free days a year. Representative Taggart ultimately sided with the staff recommendation of $107.4 million after reviewing the revenue calculation. The motion passed 3-2, with Kirkmeyer and Amabile as the two dissenting votes.
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“Constitution's pretty clear. 1% of 3% goes into the SEF. It doesn't say, oh, if something happens in the future, we're going to take it out of there and move it over someplace else. Not what it says. Constitution is very clear. 1% of 3% goes to the SEF. And I think that's what we should be doing. And I'm not transferring. I don't want to transfer it to the healthy School meals.”
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Sign in to subscribeIt's, It's. Today we will be doing figure setting for the Department of Education programs other than school financing categoricals with Ms. Bickel. You have prepared a weighty document for us today. So thank you. This clearly was an incredible amount of work. Thank you. It was sort of a depressing amount of work, honestly, in terms of the content. But I'm glad I could do it for you. I wanted to start with actually one of the separate memos I gave to you, which is the additional balancing options. Not because I want to go through the additional balancing options yet, but because I think it gives a useful, the first few pages give a useful picture of kind of what is in this part of the Department of Education. So it should have been slipped in as a separate memo. Looks like this. So the main thing to remember about this part of the Department of Education is it is, it is not tiny, but it is small compared to the big school finance and categorical components. And there's a lot of different parts to it. So if you look at that page one of the memo and…
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