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State education officials are requesting an education budget that is smaller than last year’s, but it’s also as equally unlikely to be funded as its predecessor.                                        Already operating under a $5.7 billion education budget that was reduced to $5.32 billion at the start of October, the heads of the state’s K-12 system and its two- and four-year colleges and universities made a pitch to legislators for roughly $5.44 billion in education funds for fiscal 2011.

That number could go up when the presidents of the state’s four-year universities meet with legislators today.

But the two chairmen responsible for crafting the next education budget said the state’s dire economic conditions would make it impossible to honor many of the requests proposed Wednesday.

“I think some of the requests are simply unrealistic,” said state Rep. Richard Lindsey, D-Centre, who chairs the House Education Appropriations Committee. “They are pie-in-the-sky requests.”

Lindsey said the state will struggle this budget cycle to not make cuts to programs or personnel.

State Superintendent of Education Joe Morton painted a grim picture for legislators that includes reducing the number of teachers and increasing class sizes if the state doesn’t come up with $235 million in additional funding for K-12 education.

Morton said the state would be forced to shed 3,543 of its 43,100 state-funded teaching positions without the increase.

“That’s tough,” Morton said. “We won’t have that many retire, and that means that some non-tenured teachers are going to get those dreaded pink slips.”

Morton is asking legislators to freeze state appropriations to the Public Education Employees’ Health Insurance Plan at the fiscal 2010 level, and he wants lawmakers to instruct the board’s directors to develop a health insurance plan to match available funds. Without that change, Morton said part of any funding for K-12 would go directly to cover the $295 million that teacher insurance and retirement boards have said they need to cover costs.Morton also is asking lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment that would ensure that K-12 education would get at least 70 percent of the budget, based on the fact that they enroll about 70 percent of all public education students.Morton pointed out that unlike two- and four-year colleges and universities, K-12 education does not have any mechanism for raising money.

“I don’t know how you ask a second-grader to solve the problem of potentially his classroom size going up, or that she doesn’t have a textbook, or that there are no funds to put fuel in buses,” Morton said. “I don’t know any third-grader who can go to a bank and ask for a loan for the building of the 2011 budget.”

Morton said the voters should be allowed to decide, but it’s a move that the state’s two- and four-year colleges and universities opposed.

New two-year college Chancellor Frieda Hill told legislators that if higher education only received 30 percent of the education budget it likely would cost two-year colleges about $16.5 million, which would mean layoffs.

Hill said dividing up the budget based on student enrollment rather than what it costs to educate a student would be unfair. The state’s two- and four-year colleges and universities are asking for about $1.6 billion for fiscal 2011.

Hill said, for example, that the cost to educate a student pursuing a nursing degree far outweighs what that student pays in tuition.

Greg Fitch, executive director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, said it might sound good to divvy up the Education Trust Fund based on full-time enrollment, but in some four-year programs the cost of equipment is more expensive than educating six classes of K-12 students.

“We’ve got to determine how we find a balance,” Fitch said. “Right now we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

State Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, said he’s not sure that funding education can be broken down with a strict formula such as a 70/30 split because there are so many factors.

“What little money we have needs to be used to educate all of the children of Alabama,” he said. “I’m just concerned that we don’t have enough resources to adequately fund education.”

Sanders likened public education to a pyramid with K-12 as its base, two-year colleges in the middle and higher education at the top.

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