With a $3.6 billion budget shortfall facing the upcoming 2011 General Assembly, the worst-kept secret in Raleigh -- make that the Western Hemisphere -- is that the legislature will be making significant cuts. Republicans won both the House and Senate for the first time in more than a century in the Nov. 2 election, and they'll be looking at every part of the budget to make necessary cuts, they say.
But the N.C. Justice Center argues in a new report that not only should legislators not cut the public schools' budget, they ought to increase funding for schools. The center's Education & Law Project says in a news release that the state's education system is "one of the worst-funded in America" and that the state's school funding formula "is one of the most complex and least effective at aiding needy students." And the report says this state lags behind its immediate neighbors: South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
To be found online at www.ncjustice.org, the report, "North Carolina's Public School Funding System: Underfunded, Unclear, and Unfair," argues that the state needs an increase in overall funding, says Matthew Ellinwood, a Justice Center policy analyst.
Specifically, the report says Census data show North Carolina to be "45th in the nation in per‐pupil spending and 43rd in the nation in per‐pupil expenditure as a share of personal income. North Carolina ranks behind other southern states including South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Kentucky. "
