Lawmakers attempt to deceive taxpayers
with 65 percent solution

The “First Class Education” group, with its so-called “65 percent solution,” is now targeting Missouri for a ballot initiative in 2006. Gov. Matt Blunt has indicated his support for the proposal, labeling it “Our Students First.” The plan would require a minimum of 65 percent of a school district’s operational expenditures be “in the classroom.”

The proposal reflects a philosophy that public schools don’t need more funding, but simply need better funding allocation.

“Missouri’s legislative leaders apparently view this as a helpful electoral diversion from the liabilities of inadequate state education funding and the ongoing funding lawsuit,” says Otto Fajen, MNEA legislative director. “More ominous is the recent revelation that the out-of-state proponents of the 65 percent mandate have ulterior motives: paving the way for passage of tax credit vouchers and using the 65 percent appeal as a tool for passage of the less well-received Taxpayer Bill of Rights state spending limit.”

The group backing the idea has been pushing for adoption in several states, according to Fajen. Missouri schools spend just over 60 percent of operational budgets “in the classroom” as defined by this scheme, while the national average is 61 percent. The definition supporters propose includes teachers’ salaries, supplies, instructional aides, field trips and athletics while excluding costs related to administration, building maintenance, food service, libraries, counselors and transportation. All these student support costs are explicitly assumed to have no role in promoting student achievement, according to the sponsors of the mandate.

“This no-classroom-left-behind approach of a one-size-fits-all, top-down mandate sounds very familiar to anyone working in public education today after the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind act,” Fajen says. “This proposal, which does not increase school funding by a dime, goes in the wrong direction by distracting attention from the larger problem of overall inadequacy of funding. Worse, the proposal could actually require districts to arbitrarily change allocation of funds from vital expenditures that support learning, such as hiring librarians, counselors and nurses, so that each district can meet this new state mandate.”