Berger's misinformation campaign on education funding

NC GOP dictionary revision #74: more and less are now synonyms:

"Our level of state funding for K-12 education for FY12-13 will also be roughly $50 million higher than the Democrats’ K-12 budget for FY09-10."

But the graph is misleading in terms of the money that was actually available to schools. It ignores key pieces of the 2009-10 and 2010-11 budgets. Taking a more complete view, the budget proposed for 2012-13 is actually $330 million less than the one enacted in 2009-10.

Call it what you want, either "spinning" the numbers or a bald-faced lie. But when the GOP leadership feels the need to mislead on something as important as education funding, it means that deep down, they know they've taken a step that a majority of North Carolinians would oppose. If they learned the truth, that is.

According to the Department of Public Instruction, there was another $398.3 million in education stabilization funds available in the 2010-11 fiscal year. In both years, that money is accounted for as a cut to state spending, because it came from a federal grant, not the state's general fund. While it didn't show up in the state's bottom line, it was still available to schools.

"The theory was, they (lawmakers) were were going to put the money back in the budget when revenues improved," said Phillip Price, CFO for the Department of Public Instruction. Price, who has worked in the past for the legislature, noted that anyone paid with education stabilization money was a state employee.

It's also worth noting that in 2010-11, local school districts had federal EduJobs money available. This was a separate federal source from the education stabilization stimulus funding. EduJobs went directly to local school districts but was used primarily to pay for positions cut by the state.

Just to give you a snapshot of how the Republican cuts impact individual school districts, take a look at Jones County. A drop in funding of $546,372 from 2009-2013, and an added (forced) reversion of $394,712 back to the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011-2012.

A thorn by any other name.