Sargent Proposes BEP Changes

State Representative and House Finance Chair Charles Sargent will change how the state divvies up the school funding formula, known as the BEP.

Franklin Home Page reports:

In his first bill, Sargent said breaking down the figures and math with the BEP formula is simply complicated. But essentially, what he wants to accomplish is making sure districts receive their fair share of money.

New money would go into the BEP formula, and would provide a baseline for what the state has to provide per district. School districts should receive 80 percent of the average funding per pupil.

Essentially, no district would receive less than 80% of the state’s average per pupil expenditure.

The story also notes that Sargent wants the state to begin fully funding growth for districts:

Sargent said his second bill is a little bit less complex. Simply, he said he wanted the state to pay for growth entirely for districts. Right now, it only pays a partial percentage. And for districts that growing quickly like Williamson, it could be a game changer. The district grew last year by 1,800 students. In the next five years, that number will expand to 10,000 new students in WCS.

At the present time this last year, we funded anything over 1.4 percent growth,” Sargent said. “So if your district grew 2.4 percent, we paid for one percent of the at increase. But really, we need to fully fund all growth.”

With the state experiencing a significant budget surplus, it will be interesting to see if these proposed changes or other improvements to the BEP are adopted.

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