The document below compares the House and Senate versions of HB 1525, which is the main school finance bill this session and the clean-up bill from last session’s HB 3. Some of the major changes are highlighted below:
- Stimulus Spending Limitation: Would require districts to reserve a certain percentage of their ESSER III funds for use beginning in the 2024-25 school year. While the bill does not state the percentage, Sen. Taylor mentioned 40 percent in his comments laying out the bill. Districts could access this amount before 2024-25 if they receive a waiver from the commissioner (section 25).
- MOE Adjustment: Would allow the commissioner to adjust districts’ funding to ensure compliance with federal maintenance of effort and maintenance of equity requirements under ESSER II and ESSER III (section 25).
- Swap-and-Drops: Changes swap-and-drop provisions to apply only to tax rates adopted after bill is effective (section 32).
- Formula Transition Grant: Would cap the formula transition grant to $400 million, beginning in 2021-22. This would likely decrease the amount of funding many districts would receive (section 24).
- Reading Academies: Reading academy deadline would be extended through 2022-23, not 2023-24 (section 5).
- Tax Reduction for Frozen Properties: Does not include Representative Howard’s floor amendment to HB 1525 that would allow tax reductions due to tax compression under HB 3 for those taxpayers with frozen property taxes.
- Teacher Pay Raises: Does not include Representative Turner’s amendment that preserves the compensation increases required under HB 3.