The special commission of the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and the Enhancement of Education Professionals (Fundeb) in the Chamber of Deputies has a sufficient number of deputies to be installed. The start of work now depends on the decision of the President of the House, Rodrigo Maia (DEM-RJ).
Under current legislation, Fundeb, one of the main sources of funding for municipalities and states in the country, continues to exist until the end of 2020. To prevent states and municipalities from being without guaranteed resources, it is necessary for the National Congress to approve a Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) maintaining the fund.
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Proposals with similar content are being processed both in the Federal Senate, PEC 33/2019 and in the Chamber of Deputies, PEC 15/2015.
In the Chamber, the discussion is more advanced. On February 27, Maia created the special commission to continue the discussion of the proposal. On the same date, an official letter was sent to the party leaders, asking them to indicate names to compose the commission, which can have up to 35 members.
According to the General Secretariat of the Board of the Chamber, 23 members were appointed, enough for the commission to be installed – the minimum is 18 parliamentarians. There is no statutory deadline for the President of the Chamber to install the special Fundeb commission.
Fundeb is a kind of reserve of financial resources for education. It is composed of part of what states and municipalities collect. The Union complements the cake, with 10% of the Fundeb total each year.
Most of these resources (at least 60%) should be used to pay teachers, directors and other teaching professionals in public schools. The rest, in other expenditures for the maintenance and development of education, that is, in renovations, acquisition and maintenance of equipment and acquisition of didactic materials.
“Fundeb is binding. If you withdraw, there will be managers who care about and invest in education, but there will be those who don't care so much and who will invest less.
There will be no equity for all students in Brazil. Fundeb provided this”, said the president of the State Council of Secretaries of Education (Consed), Cecília da Motta, who is secretary of Education in Mato Grosso do Sul.
A technical study by the Chamber's Budget and Financial Inspection Consultancy shows, in 2015 figures, that the lowest amount spent per student per year could reach R$ 415 without Fundeb. With the fund, the minimum expenditure was BRL 2,900 per student.
According to a study by the Todos pela Educação movement, cited in the justification for the proposal being discussed in the Senate Federal, in at least 4,810 Brazilian municipalities, Fundeb corresponds to 50% of everything spent per student every year. In 1,102 of these municipalities, Fundeb's participation in total expenditures reaches 80%.
“We are totally dependent on Fundeb resources. If they said that Fundeb was over, our education would collapse financially. All the resources that enter Fundeb are not enough to pay the payroll.
Everything goes to pay the teachers and there is still not enough”, says the Secretary of Education of Limoeiro do Norte (CE), Maria de Fátima Holanda.
The municipality has about 56,300 inhabitants and is located 200 kilometers (km) from Fortaleza. According to the secretary, the municipality complies with the national floor for teachers, which is R$ 2,557.74, but there is no money left to invest in the school:
“If I had the resources, I would invest in libraries, laboratories, after-school activities for students”.
The same occurs in Groaíras (CE), a municipality with 11 thousand inhabitants, located 253 km from the capital. “It's quite tight, 95.1% goes to payroll and only 4.9% to other expenses.
I can't maintain a good infrastructure in schools, I can't adapt schools for full time. I still need to expand the box, bathroom, canteen”, says the secretary of Education of the municipality, Francisca Hianice Vasconcelos.
Both the proposal being processed by the Chamber of Deputies and the proposal by the Federal Senate make Fundeb permanent. The proposals also expand the Union's complement from the current 10% to 30%.
PEC 24/2017, which until last year was being discussed in the Senate, is awaiting unfiling. The proposal expands the Union complement to 50%, in six years.
The president of the National Union of Municipal Education Directors (Undime), Alessio Costa Lima, said that the Union is the federal entity that collects the most, but that it has less participation in the maintenance of the teaching.
“In fact, those who maintain public basic education in our country are municipalities and states. In this sense, by signaling that the Union should participate with greater participation, I believe that there is greater decentralization of resources.
It would ensure that states and municipalities, which carry out educational policies, actually had access to available resources, ”he argued.
Fundeb was one of the topics dealt with at the public hearing with the Minister of Education, Ricardo Vélez, last Wednesday (27), in the Chamber. According to Deputy Professor Dorinha (DEM-TO), who was the rapporteur for the Fundeb PEC in the special committee until last year, the proposal “is practically ready to be voted on”.
The deputy defended a greater participation of the Union: “I understand the moment of crisis, but we want a different financing logic. We start from the premise that the Union needs to allocate more resources, but also [we want] to redesign the distribution format of resources, correcting distortions and inequalities to ensure that municipalities and states that most need help can receive it”.
At the public hearing, Vélez said that the portfolio is committed to the continuity of Fundeb. “This is our explicit commitment, to maintain Fundeb.
We are looking at the best way. My proposal is to closely monitor the evolution of this proposal in Congress and, if it is necessary for the Union to increase its participation, we will study the best way to do so, "he said.
