An interim Legislative committee is looking at the k-12 education funding proposal for the next two year period.
The price tag: $2 billion.
"It's the largest education funding bill in the history of North Dakota," said Education Funding Committee chairman Sen. Tim Flakoll (R-Farg0). Flakoll says as proposed, it would raise the per pupil payments from the current $9092 per student to $9482 in the 2015-2016 school year – and to $9766 per student in the following school year. Flakoll says the bill includes $280 million new dollars that follow the students, plus $125 million for school construction loans.
"We believe it's designed to focus money in areas that benefit student performance," said Flakoll.
The president of North Dakota United -- an organization representing teachers -- says he hasn’t had a lot of time to dissect the bill.
"I'm happy with the commitment the state is making toward funding education," said Nick Archuleta. "This bill doesn't include some of the things that go into educating children, like transportation. But what I've seen so far, I'm very pleased."
The superintendent of the Dunseith school district says his district is being treated unfairly because of federal money it receives.
Pat Brendan says the district receives that money in lieu of property taxes. He says the district has a lot of trust land – so that money is deducted from the payments the district receives from the state aid formula. But Brendan says the district actually loses money – because the deduction is more than the federal money the district receives.
"We feel like it's a penalty because of the trust land within our district," said Brendan. He wants to see tghe formula made more fair for districts like his.
"Make it fair, so it's the same as all the other revenues districts are getting," said Brendan.
Archuleta agrees the state needs to do something.
"Maybe it was an unforeseen by-product of the new funding formula," said Archuleta. "But now that we know the problem exists, there's an obligation to correct that."
Archuleta says there are 40 other school districts in the same boat as Dunseith.
