newsminer.com

Juneau — Gov. Sarah Palin is leaving the contentious school funding issue of district cost factors up to state lawmakers.

Two bills in the Legislature would set up temporary work groups to study the issue and develop updateable models to help the state account for differing costs of education in different areas.

One bill calls for an 11-member group comprised mostly of lawmakers appointed by legislative leaders. The other, sponsored by Sen. Gary Wilken, R-Fairbanks, calls for an eight-member group appointed by the governor and including only two lawmakers.

At a hearing on the two bills Wednesday morning, Eddy Jeans, director of school finance for the state’s Department of Education and Early Development, said the administration preferred the legislative group.

The recommendation to form the group came from the Joint Legislative Education Funding Task Force that met over the interim to tackle K-12 funding issues. Jeans said the task force worked “really well,” bringing in various experts and deliberating on issues, and added that a similar legislative group could work well for dealing with district cost factors.

The issue has been contentious for years, with lawmakers disagreeing over which factors should be considered when determining how much to boost state funding for high-cost school districts.

Wilken argues the issue will continue to be contentious as long as the Legislature drives it because individual lawmakers will always be looking out for their own districts.

“I’m just really concerned that what we’re trying to do is what’s already been tried,” he said. “We’re setting ourselves up for failure.”

Wilken argues that leaving the job to the governor would remove the politics.

Jeans agrees the issue is political. Whether or not a lawmaker supports an individual model depends largely on how his district makes out, he said.

Jeans said after the hearing that he thought politics would play a role regardless of who was in charge and that lawmakers would still criticize the model if it affected their districts negatively.

He said the administration ultimately preferred the legislative group because it considered school funding a legislative issue.

“It’s a funding policy discussion that needs to occur with the Legislature,” he said.

The Senate Special Committee on Education, which heard the proposals, held both bills for further consideration. The bills are SCR 16 and SB 219.

Members of the House Finance Committee on Wednesday discussed a separate bill that would implement recommendations of the task force dealing with district cost factors, the base student allocation, and funding for students with intensive needs.

That bill is HB 273.