More on the math

Legislative budget analyst Paul Headlee now says House Education Chairman Bob Nonini’s math may have been correct after all, depending on how you calculate. Nonini, quizzed by a JFAC member this morning, said a 1 percent increase in discretionary funding for school districts would cost $3.5 million. State budget figures show the 1 percent increase that state Superintendent Tom Luna requested for next year would cost $7.3 million. But Headlee just got back to me to say that part of that is because of the increase in student counts; if another 1 percent were to be added on top of next year’s budget request, without any change in student counts, it’d cost $3.5 million. “There’s just different ways of looking at it,” Headlee said. For his part, Nonini said he figured the number he gave was correct – because he got it from Luna.