The state’s top education official is defending the governor’s budget plan for next year, but the focus of the administration is trained on the past.

Gov. Corbett’s budget proposal would increase by $20 million the largest share of state education spending, compared to the budget that was passed last year.  School districts say that specific increase is overshadowed by the proposed $100 million cut to another education funding stream, known as Accountability Block Grants.  

But Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis pointed out that the grants were nixed all together from the last spending plan for the current year. 

“That Accountability Block Grant was not in the ‘11-‘12 budget,” said Tomalis, a guest on Radio Smart Talk with Scott Lamar today.  “I know that that’ll be some quibbling out there, but the fact is that it wasn’t in the ‘11-‘12 budget.  That line item for the ‘11-‘12 budget was zero.”

Gov.  Corbett himself has said the current budget he passed last year did cut education spending, if one looks at state spending “as a whole.”  Tomalis said those decision have to be taken into context with a looming expected deficit, and the spending decisions of yesteryear – namely, an over-reliance on temporary federal stimulus funding.

Tomalis said Corbett’s spending choices have to be taken into context with the fact that the biggest state funding cut to education happened during the Rendell administration.  He noted that the reduction wasn’t felt by schools at the time because it was filled in with federal stimulus dollars. 

“And I was on plenty of these calls,” said Tomalis.  “Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education, was talking about this phrase, ‘the funding cliff.’  The funding cliff was coming and we all knew that that money was going to go away, yet it was built into the base of funding.”