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Ryan Maher, R-Isabel, chairman of the Executive Board, which handles management issues for the Legislature in the nine months each year the lawmakers are not in session.
• Wade Pogany, executive director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota, said he hopes the study will look at new funding sources, not just changes in the way existing money is divvied up among the school districts.
• "At least the conversation will begin. That what's important to think about -- long-term funding solutions for education," Pogany said.
• Pogany said school districts still have not recovered from the cuts that Gov. Dennis Daugaard and the Legislature made two years ago to help balance the state budget.
• South Dakota law requires that state aid to schools increase each year by the level of inflation, up to a maximum of 3 percent a year. The Legislature in some years has given schools extra one-time money that is not built into the base used to calculate future increases, but it also gave no increase in 2010 and cut aid in 2011 when the sluggish economy limited state tax collections.
• The funding formula requires that each school district's general-fund budget spend the same amount per student from a combination of local property taxes and state aid. After a school district collects property taxes using a standard statewide levy, it receives enough state aid to bring total spending for general operations up to the required level per student. Small schools get extra state aid.
• This year's Legislature increased ongoing state aid by 3 percent, setting spending for each student at $4,626 for the next school year, but Pogany said that's still below the $4,805 per student allocation before the 2011 cut. Lawmakers this year also approved an extra 1 percent increase in one-time money outside the ongoing funding.
• Pogany said lawmakers need to look at new revenue sources to boost school funding and ways to improve the fairness of the system used to divide money among school districts.
• "We're hopeful a big part of the discussion is revenue sources for schools. Not just rearranging the pie, but are there other revenue sources for schools," Pogany said.
• A state task force that studied school funding seven years ago could not agree on how to handle some revenue sources outside the formula used to equalize general fund spending in schools, said Sen. Phyllis Heineman, R-Sioux Falls. This summer's study will include those other funds, which include a separate local property tax levy for buildings and equipment, bank tax and the traffic fines given to each school.

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