Scott Bruun: Education, Priorities, and the Governor’s Budget

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Governor John Kitzhaber

Governor Kitzhaber’s office has just released his “2015-2017 Governor’s Opportunity & Investment Budget”. The paper is really a 24-page synopsis of the governor’s much larger two-volume proposed budget. As in past years, the synopsis is primarily designed for public relations purposes. It strives to set the themes and language to be employed for future budget conversations – in the legislature and elsewhere. Choosing the right words is important, of course; less one person’s “opportunity & investment” becomes another’s “tax & spend”.

But let’s give the governor his due. He has long verbalized his commitment to Oregon public education, and his proposed 2015-2017 biennial budget absolutely puts our money where his mouth is. Under the governor’s proposal, total education spending would increase to $9.4 billion, or 51 percent of the total general fund. This would represent growth of about 8.6% since the last biennium – or around 4.3% annual growth.

This solid level of growth should certainly mitigate normal inflationary pressures. It’s also important to remember that this is not the final number. The legislature usually finds the money to propose and pass education funding bills that exceed the governor’s proposals. Power of the purse, and all that.

Nevertheless, the proposed 8.6% increase this biennium falls far short of the 17.5% growth seen last biennium. Some might point to this as a good thing. Good in that slower spending growth may finally indicate that we have dug ourselves out from under the systemic shortfall that plagued education funding throughout the Great Recession. There is some truth to this.

But the governor’s budget this time is extremely aggressive in spending on new or vastly increased kindergarten and pre-k programs. Early Head Start, Early Learning Hubs, Healthy Start-Healthy Families, Oregon Pre-Kindergarten (preschool), and full-day kindergarten are a few of the areas. All have value, especially when it comes to preparing our youngest children for school and ensuring early reading skills. But at what cost?

Sure, taxpayer funded preschool and full-day kindergarten will certainly help parents who would otherwise need to find private childcare alternatives for their 5 year old. But how will expansive new funding here help alleviate over-crowded classrooms in the other twelve grades? How will new funds for full-day kindergarten and new public preschools get back lost school days for Oregon’s 490,000-or-so students who aren’t in kindergarten?

Or ask yourself this: If you are an Oregon parent with a kid in public school, when was the last time you remember your child having a full week of school, five days in a row, for any consecutive period longer than two weeks? Some of us even remember when students only got two days off for Thanksgiving, not five.

And how about higher education? While the governor’s budget is slightly ambiguous when it comes to classroom dollars for Oregon’s colleges, what’s not ambiguous are the standings. Oregon ranks 46th out of 50 states in our public support for college students. Said differently, public spending per college student in Oregon currently stands at 70.4% of the national average. Almost thirty-percent below the national average, which is to say thirty-percent below the middle. But hey we’ve got great football teams, right?

Similarly, Oregon’s public professorial staff - the researchers and the teachers in the lecture hall - seem grossly underpaid. Compared to their peers nationwide, average compensation for Oregon’s professors dwells in the bottom quartile. Or said differently, at least 75% of professors nationwide make more than their Oregon counterpart. Doesn’t this make it hard for Oregon to attract and retain the best and the brightest? Ah, but fear not. Over the last few years Oregon has moved from the bottom of the lowest quartile to the middle of the lowest quartile. That’s fantastic. Now when professors go out to celebrate their windfall, they’ll be able to afford a second olive in their bottom-shelf martini.

As we think about public colleges and college students in Oregon, a pretty strong argument in favor of more support can be made. Simply put, the best return on investment from any public expenditure, bar none, is the return Oregon receives from higher education. Consider that college-educated Oregonians will, on average, pay far more in taxes than those without college. The same will also, on average, have far lesser need for the public services those taxes pay for.

Few would disagree that education, bottom-to-top, is the most important agenda item for the State of Oregon. But the right balance is important. I like kindergarten as much as the next guy. But I also want my middle-school 7th grader and my high-school sophomore to have full school years inside uncrowded classrooms. And forgive me, but I also want Oregon’s colleges and universities to be among the best in the nation. And not just at football.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs, yet dutifully commutes every day to Portland, where he earns his living on the fifth floor of Big Pink.