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Panel proposes simple smoothing for small‑school funding to eliminate 'cliffs'
Summary
Staff proposed eliminating sharp funding cliffs for schools under 50 students by calculating a school’s 50‑student funding level and reducing it by 1.5 percentage points for each student below 50, producing a smooth, linear taper rather than an abrupt switch to a different staffing rule.
The Select Committee heard a staff proposal to remove abrupt funding “cliffs” that occur when a school’s average daily membership (ADM) drops below 50 students. Under the current model, schools at or above 50 students receive the model’s full staffing and resource allocations; schools under 50 are funded under a different staffing rule (approximately one teacher per seven students and a single assistant principal), producing large, non‑linear reductions in funding for relatively small changes in enrollment.
Dr. Brown, a member of the recalibration team, proposed a transparent, linear smoothing: when a school has fewer than 50 students, calculate the funding the school would receive at 50 and then reduce that funding by 1.5 percentage points for every student fewer than 50. "So for every student they have less than 50, you only subtract 1.5%," she told the committee. The change would eliminate the most dramatic cliffs while preserving the current statutory or modeled minimums; no school would receive less funding than under the present model.
Staff illustrated the effect with district examples: an elementary school moving from 50 to 49 students would see only a 1.5% reduction instead of a larger drop; middle and high schools, which under current rules face larger cliff effects, would similarly be subject to a gradual decline. The staff proposal is intentionally simple and transparent so it can be implemented without a large recalculation of other model components and so district planners can predict cash‑flow impacts.
Committee members expressed support for a straightforward fix and asked for numeric examples by district. Dr. Brown said the proposed linear taper could be implemented immediately in the funding model and would be easy to recalibrate if the committee later changed the 50‑student threshold or the minimums at the 1‑student level.
No formal action was taken; staff will return with draft language and district‑level scenarios if the committee asks them to proceed.
