Straight shot at the judge who has been overseeing the leandro equal access to education case. NC conservatives don't like to be reminded that the NC constitution mandates an equal public education for all citizens.
As for the $500 million figure, close observers will note that every single ad attributes this figure to the same source — an editorial in Charlotte Observer that ran in 2013. “The Senate and House budget plan … cuts education spending by almost $500 million in the next two years, including a decrease in net spending for K-12 public schools,” the editorial said.
That’s right, this is a two-year number — and the second year is adjusted as circumstances warrant. Moreover, the $500 million figure is comparing the figures over two years against a “continuation budget” — what would be needed to maintain the same level of spending based on inflation, population growth and other factors. In Washington parlance, this is known as “the baseline.” It’s an important concept, but it is simply an illustration; it not does not reflect actual budget numbers.
On top of that, as the editorial acknowledged, this is a figure for all education spending. Only $117 million of these baseline reductions occurred in K-12 education in 2013-2014; the other cuts were in community colleges and university education. That amounts to a decrease of just 1.5 percent of the K-12 education budget.
Philip Price, chief financial officer of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, said that this continues a trend since 2009 in which salaries and benefits have been boosted, while funding for classroom services have decreased. The number of students in public schools has increased by 44,000, or nearly 3 percent, but he said the education budget has not quite kept pace.
That mismatch of better pay and benefits for educators and lower spending for classrooms, he said, has meant that since 2009, funding for textbooks has declined 78 percent, instructional supplies fell 51 percent, the number of teacher assistants dropped 23 percent and the number of classroom teachers declined 3.5 percent.
In other words, lawmakers have decided to alter the mix of education funding by increasing teacher pay and benefits while reducing classroom services. So there is some room for complaints about the legislature’s priorities, but that’s an entirely different matter than claiming “$500 million” in cuts.
I think I posted a chart earlier in this thread that shows the "increase" ensures NC teacher pay remains well below average.