Public ed gets infusion; special ed faces cut

Public education got a multimillion-dollar infusion Tuesday, but special education advocates are worried about $900,000 cut from their budget.

HB382, passed by the House Tuesday afternoon, provides an additional one percent to the Weighted Pupil Unit, bringing the total increase in the WPU to 4.5 percent in the coming year.

Formerly known as the Supplemental Minimum School Program Finance Act, HB382 is the second school funding bill brought to the Legislature this session and primarily distributes the state's additional revenue committed to public education funding.

The bill, which passed with almost no debate, also provides funding for teacher supply money, the Electronic High School, online testing, and youth in custody programs. All told, it appropriates almost $20 million in additional funds to public education.

The Utah Education Association especially praised the teacher supply money and giving new teachers more of that cash. President Pat Rusk also smiles on the WPU increase.

"We're glad to see the 4.5 (percent)," Rusk said. "We believe they could have done better."

While public education officials are pleased with the new money, they are bemoaning the potential loss of almost $1 million because of the Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarship. That money will be transferred to the general fund to cover the estimated costs of the scholarships.

The money won't be reinvested elsewhere in the schools' budgets, either, but will go to the Rainy Day Fund as a budget balancing tool, said Executive Appropriations co-chairman Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley.

"The funding comes out of public education, and it's not returned to them in savings," Bigelow said. "But there are fewer students, and we're paying for (voucher students) out of the general fund."

The budget cut is based on Utah's enrollment-based funding and constitutional requirement to balance the budget.

Weighted Pupil Units are the basic funding formula in the more than $2.2 billion Minimum School Program Act. They're complicated but basically work like this: If a school has 500 students, it gets 500 WPUs. If it will only have 400 students next year, it will only get 400 WPUs.

The Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarships will draw enough students to pull $727,300 out of special education budgets, according to a State Office of Education analysis. It also would pull out another $176,000 or so in money attached to those special education WPUs, including teachers' Social Security and retirement, and local school district board and voted leeway money.