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Will new State Board of Education and Superintendent continue to make large budget requests?

By   /   December 14, 2011  /   1 Comment

Tomorrow (Thursday), the State Board of Education is expected to vote on a budget request to state lawmakers.  It will be the first budget request made by Superintendent Janet Barresi and the board which is now made up entirely of members appointed by Governor Mary Fallin over the last eight months.  While the Board of Equalization has not yet given preliminary revenue figures, lawmakers are talking about a stand-still budget as higher revenues for this year will have to replace one-time funds put into the current budget.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Board of Education will request a stand-still budget.

Other agencies have already submitted budget requests asking for hundreds of millions more.  And in the recent past, the Department of Education has always asked for huge increases, no matter what the state’s financial situation:

The Board agenda will be posted online later today and if there are indications of what the budget request will be, this story will be updated, so be sure to check back.  Oklahoma Watchdog will be at tomorrow’s Board meeting, providing live updates via Twitter.

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  • Wendy Pratt

    Thank you for sharing this information! But, the question is not whether the Board will continue to make large budget requests; the question is whether or not the Board will continue to proposed what is NEEDED by students and their schools.

    Here is the law: “Submit to the Governor a departmental budget based upon major functions of the Department as prepared by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and supported by detailed data on needs and proposed operations as partially determined by the budgetary needs of local school districts filed with the State Board of Education for the ensuing fiscal year. Appropriations therefor shall be made in lump-sum form for each major item in the budget as follows:

    a. State Aid to schools,

    b. the supervision of all other functions of general and special education including general control, free textbooks, school lunch, Indian education and all other functions of the Board and an amount sufficient to adequately staff and administer these services, and

    c. the Board shall determine the details by which the budget and the appropriations are administered. Annually, the Board shall make preparations to consolidate all of the functions of the Department in such a way that the budget can be based on two items, administration and aid to schools. A maximum amount for administration shall be designated as a part of the total appropriation;”

    Now, if the Board’s budget request tomorrow does not meet these requirements, it is out of compliance with state law. Period.

    http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=89776