Education Budget Cuts Likely

By Alex Cameron, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- State lawmakers have again missed their self-imposed deadline to Fund Education First. And when they do fund education, it may be less than educators are expecting.

"We don't know if we're going to be cut one percent, three percent, 10 percent over the next three years," said Tulsa Tech Superintendent Kara Neal.

Neal is frustrated with what she says in hypocrisy on the part of lawmakers who can't meet their own budget deadline, and yet complain that schools should be run more like businesses.

"There is no business that does not know what their next year's budget is going to be," the Tulsa Tech Superintendent said.

"The deadline is obviously a worthy goal and something we should try to do, but this year there was just no way to get an answer by April first," said State Treasurer Scott Meacham.

Legislators passed a law in 2003 setting an annual deadline of April 1 to approve the state's education budget - a deadline they generally have not met. Complicating matters this year are a revenue shortfall estimated to be between $600 and $900 million, and more than $2 billion in federal stimulus money.

State budget officials and lawmakers are still trying to get a clear handle on just how much money will be available to spend next fiscal year.

"In fact, just today we got the guidance from it, just got off a conference call discussing how we can use that, and that was a critical piece of the puzzle that we had to have before we could start putting the budget together," the Oklahoma State Treasurer said.

"I think that starting next week we are going to really work hard to try to start coming up with some kind of agreement on that, 'cause we're running out of time, and we're aware of the need," said Sen. Mike Johnson, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Lawmakers said they sympathize with educators, but in a budget year like this, no department, not even education can be held harmless.

"No doubt in my mind education will be taking some kind of a cut," Sen. Johnson said.

Last year, lawmakers appropriated about $2.5 billion to education, about 35 percent of the state's total budget.