• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Officials representing South Dakota school districts urged a legislative panel Wednesday to consider recommending a boost in state financial aid to schools, not just changes in the way money is divided among school districts.
• "Education is in a crisis, and we truly need to do something about it -- not soon, but now," Rob Monson, executive director of the South Dakota Association of School Administrators, told the lawmakers.
• Financial problems are causing school districts to cut some program,s and they are losing teachers to districts in other states that pay higher salaries, Monson told the Legislature's Education Funding Formula Study Committee.
• Dick Schaffan, superintendent of the McIntosh School District, said he agrees that school districts are in financial trouble.
• "I hope you can find something to help us out," Schaffan said.
• The committee was appointed to study the state's system for funding public school districts. It is specifically charged with looking at how the funding formula affects high school graduation rates, how technology affects education and why many school districts have decided to increase local property taxes above standard state limits.
• Some committee members questioned whether they are allowed to look at the overall funding levels for schools, but others said the panel's specific tasks require such consideration.
• The committee met for the first time Wednesday, spending most of the day learning about how state, federal and local funding is used in schools and how the formula distributes money among South Dakota's 151 public school districts.
• School officials say they have not recovered from cuts 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 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, a total of $4,626 next year. After a school district collects property taxes

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