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House Education Appropriations Committee holds oversight hearing on federal funds

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The House Elementary and Secondary Education Appropriations Committee held an oversight hearing on Missouri’s use of federal funds Tuesday with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education providing testimony.

Chairman Kurt Bahr, R-St. Charles, said the hearing took place in part for the committee members to educate themselves better on the various programs that fund federal dollars and what flexibility, if any, the state has in appropriating that money.

“The purpose of the hearing was simply to better understand the funds that flow through education… what they are, what their purposes are, how they affect education funding in our state,” Bahr said.

Currently, Missouri receives just over $1 billion in federal funds for educational purposes. The largest amount of federal money, about $293 million, goes towards school nutritional services for public and private schools that take part in state school lunch, donated foods, after-school snack, breakfast and like programs. The other two largest chunks go toward Title I funding, which benefits low-income students, and special education, to the tune of $250 million and $274.6 million respectively.

With many of these funding programs requiring state matches to receive federal money, Bahr says the state is doing all it can to receive as much money as possible.

“It seems to me we are fully utilizing all of the matches they have,” Bahr said. “There is no program that we weren’t properly matching. We’re at least doing the bare minimum, and there are several programs, we had more than what was required for the match.”

For example, Missouri receives $42.6 million in federal money for vocational rehabilitation to assist individuals with disabilities gain employment by providing individualized employment services. The state must fund those programs 21.3 percent for the federal government to fund the other 78.7 percent. Bahr said each program is different, so a set all-encompassing formula can be difficult to attain.

Bahr added that these oversight hearings offered a lot to legislators in the way of learning how the state’s general revenue gets distributed and that it allowed committee members to better understand issues outside the heat of the session.

“Some of the issues we had some heated conversations during session about, and so it was helpful to get another take on what the purpose is without the emotion at the time of being for or against certain programs,” Bahr said. “My whole take was simply to educate the committee so next year in January when we’re in the budgetary process again, we better understand what the programs are so we can then better utilize our general revenue, our state dollars, for other educational parts.”

The committee held a similar hearing in September to understand the role of lottery funds in state education spending, and Bahr left open the possibility of holding another hearing as well.