The state’s Minimum Foundation Program — the arch-fund that distributes money to the state’s K-12 education system — will lose the funding increases it normally receives if Gov. Bobby Jindal’s budget is approved. But the MFP will not suffer an actual funding cut because it is protected by the state constitution.
The MFP is a huge pot of combined state and local revenues that, along with federal money, is funneled through local school districts to fund public schools.
About 65 percent of MFP funding is contributed by the state, according to a study by the Cowen Institute at Tulane University. Jindal’s budget allots the program more than $3.3 billion — more than double the state deficit.
That $3.3 billion includes no funding cuts to the MFP. Jindal and other officials are often quick to point out that his administration has not cut the MFP during the past two years’ budget crisis, but actually increased funding by 6.4 percent.
But whether K-12 education is an administration priority or not, Jindal is prevented from cutting the MFP by the Article VIII, Section 12 of the state constitution without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
While policymakers are forbidden from cutting the MFP’s budget, they are allowed to stop traditional funding increases that are normally granted to the program.
In more generous fiscal years, MFP funding is usually increased annually to pay for merit pay raises for teachers and employees, increased class sizes and inflationary pressures.
Jindal and the Legislature have frozen MFP funding for the past two years. Elementary educators have complained that the freeze has caused pain for public elementary, middle and high schools even without an actual funding cut because more students are coming in and costs are growing.
Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater said when he unveiled the governor’s budget that freezing MFP funding would save the state $200 million.
The MFP is one of the largest programs in the state general fund that bears constitutional or statutory dedications. Higher education administrators have complained that the maze of dedicated funding has made huge swaths of the budget protected from budget cuts, leaving higher education and health care vulnerable.
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]