As Gov. Rick Scott heads into 2014, he faces a re-election that may be a bigger race than in 2010, when he beat Alex Sink for the top job in Tallahassee. 

Now, Scott is a month away from the annual legislative session, and seven months away from an election showdown.

Recently, Scott unveiled his proposed education budget for 2014, and in the press release, Scott made this claim:

"The $18.8 billion in funding for K-12 education funding is the highest in Florida history and includes a record $10.6 billion in state funds."

PolitiFact examined the claim for accuracy. PolitiFact reporter Joshua Gillin said that Rick Scott's claim rates HALF TRUE. Gillin said that the problem comes with the way "highest" is defined.

"At first glance, Governor Scott's claim would look easy to either prove or disprove," Gillin said. "When you look deeper into the claim, you have to ask whether or not 'highest' refers to raw dollar amount, adjusted-for-inflation dollar amount, or dollars per student.  It turns out that those are three decidedly different sets of results."

PolitiFact first looked at the raw dollars as quoted by Scott. They found that when you look at the number on the paper, the budget proposed for this year is about $542 million more than it was last year.

PolitiFact also looked at the dollar amount adjusted for inflation and found a different result. Adjusting for inflation, the budget for 2007-2008 was $20.29 billion in 2013 dollars, and that is more than the budget he is proposing this year.

Still another way to look at the number is on a per-pupil basis, where the budgeted amount is equally divided among Florida students. Scott's per-pupil amount is $6,949 per student, but back in 2007-2008, that per-pupil amount was $7,126.

Gillin said that because there are different ways to measure this and that there are different results between the types of measurement, Scott's claim about this year's education budget gets a HALF TRUE.

 

SOURCES: RECORD EDUCATION BUDGET?