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School boards have local control, until Legislature knows better • South Dakota Searchlight [1]

['Dana Hess', 'More From Author', 'March']

Date: 2024-03-25  

After the last legislative session, school board members across the state have to wonder whatever happened to local control. It seems that now the state aid their school districts receive will come with conditions.

The 2024 Legislature stepped in to tell school districts two ways that they have to spend their funding: They approved a bill that sets a $45,000 minimum salary for teachers, effective July 1, 2026. School districts that fail to meet the salary benchmark risk an accreditation review or could be dealt a $500-per-teacher deduction in state funding.

The same bill requires school districts to spend 97% of the increase in state aid on teachers’ compensation — which includes salaries and benefits — effective July 1 of this year. The unaccounted for 3% is laughably explained as giving the school districts flexibility to spend on other salaries, programming and transportation. Imagine being handed a dollar and told that 97 cents needed be to spent on a certain item, but the other 3 cents, well, you can go crazy with that.

This isn’t the first time the Legislature has told school districts how to spend their funding. A half-percent increase in the state sales tax was used to raise teacher pay in 2016. That bumped South Dakota’s teacher pay ranking all the way up to 47th in the nation. It has since fallen back to 49th.

The recent action by the Legislature amounts to an unfunded mandate. Schools will get a 4% raise in state funding this year, but nothing to boost salaries to $45,000. That’s a salary mark that 37 school districts don’t currently hit.

State aid to education is tied to enrollment. Imagine the delight of small, rural school districts that are seeing their enrollments slide, which in turn cuts their state funding, at the same time that the Legislature mandates a minimum salary for teachers.

“I know we’ve heard a lot of questions on sustainability of a bill like this and I think, in the future, this type of bill will lead to future discussions of funding, funding per student and how we fund education,” said Sen. Sydney Davis, a Republican from Burbank, in a South Dakota Searchlight story.

Davis’ look to the future is exactly what’s wrong with school funding in South Dakota. Lawmakers are continually unable to hit on a solution for how to fund education. While that plan changes year-to-year, all school districts have to look forward to are more discussions that could lead to more questionable solutions. In the meantime, teacher pay in the state will continue to be a bottom-dweller.

At least in 2016, when the Legislature told school districts how to spend their money, they had the good manners to come up with some extra funding. This time the message from lawmakers is, “Here’s your mandate, if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”

School districts aren’t blameless for the state’s low ranking in teacher pay. There are too many school districts where teacher pay is not a priority. Those are the same schools that complain when it’s difficult to find teachers to work for such low wages.

School districts in this state deserve a funding formula that doesn’t change with the whims of the Legislature. Teachers in this state deserve a wage that’s not a national embarrassment. To do that, lawmakers are going to have to come up with a funding source.

Dictating how school districts spend a 4% increase in funding isn’t going to raise teachers’ salaries by much and will likely shortchange other aspects of school budgets. It’s obvious that the Legislature wants to micromanage the way school districts spend their funding. If that micromanagement doesn’t come with extra funding, it’s a dereliction of their legislative duty.

Lawmakers profess to be happy that each school district in South Dakota is locally controlled. That is, they’re happy with local control until they get a better idea about how school districts should operate. The bill just passed by the Legislature doesn’t amount to progress on teacher pay. It’s just another nail in the coffin of local control.

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[1] Url: https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2024/03/25/school-boards-have-local-control-until-legislature-knows-better/

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