State funding laws intended to encourage education spending, may discourage it by complicating the structure of funding and requiring certain submissions on a timeline that mishmashes with county budget processes.

State “maintenance of effort” laws require a county to provide the same amount of education funding or more on a per-pupil basis each year. Maintenance of effort can discourage additional investment, especially during a faltering economic recovery, when future revenues are uncertain.

A legal provision called nonrecurring costs, however, allow county governments provide one-time school funding for one-time education costs without triggering perpetual mandates.

The hitch is: the deadline for submitting nonrecurring costs is in March – before many counties begin budget negotiations.

Perhaps as a result of this process, on average fewer than eight counties per year take advantage of this education budgeting tool.

Not all education costs are annually recurring per-student costs. One-time education expenses might include costs to:

• build new computer laboratories;
• make technology enhancements;
• start-up new instructional programs; or
• purchase books for a school library

The mechanism for appropriately excluding these one-time education costs from the maintenance of effort calculation requires special approval. A county must submit an application to exclude certain costs to the State Board for their approval before March 31 of each year.