Committee finalizes major drafting decisions on education funding and homestead tax transition

Committee members working on a sprawling education finance bill spent a markup session moving many technical choices and deadlines into the draft, agreeing to a consolidated implementation timeline and several new reporting and recalibration requirements.

The most consequential decisions centered on how the bill treats special-education weights, education opportunity payments and property-tax transitions. Committee discussion accepted language to require the Agency of Education and the Joint Fiscal Office to recalibrate special-education weights regularly, and to set education opportunity payments in a single base year so those payment amounts do not change annually, "so that folks can plan for it," a committee member said during the discussion.

Committee members also agreed to a phased reduction in allowable supplemental district spending after the main transition completes: the allowance would move from 10% to 5% over a multi-year period,…