Please contact your state representatives to let them know they need to take action before they adjourn in September to fix a shortfall in revenue limit funding for districts participating in the Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA) program.  This shortfall was created in the budget trailer bill, approved in July, which effectively redirects revenue limit dollars to QEIA.  The result will be a reduction to your revenue limit equal to the amount of funding the district receives for QEIA.

The legislation authorizes QEIA districts to apply for federal Title I funds to compensate for the revenue limit reduction.  However, there are several problems with this action, including:

• Available Title I funds fall short of the amount needed to fully compensate for the revenue limit reduction
• Not all QEIA districts qualify for Title I funding
• Title I funding is restricted and cannot be used for most purposes for which revenue limit dollars are used
• Most Title I dollars would not be allocated until after February 2010, creating cash flow and budgeting problems for QEIA districts.

Due to these concerns, we are asking the Legislature and the Governor to restore the revenue limit reductions to the school districts containing QEIA schools.  We believe there will be sufficient unutilized funds available at the state level to offset the revenue limit restoration. 

This is a very critical issue and we encourage you to not only contact your legislators directly, but also follow up with your superintendent.  ACSA has been working with the superintendents in all QEIA districts to organize a Legislative Action Day in Sacramento on Wednesday, September 2.  We encourage you to discuss this and further actions with your superintendent. 

Debra Brown, Senior Legislative Advocate (dbrown@csba.org)

Marites Ares, Legislative Analyst (mares@csba.org)

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

As your constituent and a school board member representing schoolchildren in your district, I am writing to urge you to restore a revenue limit reduction that applies only to school districts containing QEIA schools. This revenue limit reduction was contained in the recently enacted July Budget-- Section 39 of AB 2 4x. It was totally unexpected. School districts have had no time to prepare for these reductions. The revenue limit reduction for each school district is equal to the total of QEIA allocation to the schools in that district. Statewide, the reductions total $400 million.

The legislation provides that QEIA schools can apply for and receive a federal school improvement grant equal their QEIA allocations and that the QEIA schools will be able to use these funds to backfill their school district's revenue limit reduction, thereby holding the school district harmless. Unfortunately, there are many problems with this, including:

* Available Title I funds fall short of the amount needed to fully compensate for the revenue limit reduction

* Not all QEIA districts qualify for Title I funding

* Title I funding is restricted and cannot be used for most purposes for which revenue limit dollars are used

* Most Title I dollars would not be allocated until after February 2010, creating cash flow and budgeting problems for QEIA districts.

We are extremely concerned that 1) the revenue limit reductions will have a devastating impact on our children, 2) the proposed use of the federal funds to backfill the revenue limit reductions is illegal, and 3) the proposed swap will jeopardize the award of future federal funds to the state. For all these reasons we would urge you to restore the revenue limit reduction to QEIA districts. We believe that there will be sufficient unutilized K-12 funding available at the state level to offset the revenue limit restoration.

Thank you in advance for your actions to help immediately remedy this situation.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
August 26, 2009