Kansas House advances bill to overhaul school funding

The Kansas House narrowly advanced a bill that will repeal the state’s current school finance formula in favor of flexible block grants.

The proposal – first previewed by Gov. Sam Brownback during his State of State address – will give school districts more flexibility on how to spend state dollars. However, it will also reduce overall school funding for the current year.

The measure passed 64-58.

Top members of the Brownback administration were present in the House chamber during the three-hour debate on Senate Bill 7.

“It’s not a victory till it gets to his desk,” said Jon Hummel, the governor’s chief of staff, when asked for his reaction.

The House still needs to take final action on the bill Friday morning. It will then head to the Senate.

Supporters of the bill framed it as a way to free up dollars for the classroom and offer both school districts and lawmakers certainty about funding levels for the next two years.

Brownback and many conservatives say the current formula, which ebbs and flows each year depending on student demographics, is flawed.

The bill reduces funding for the current year and then keeps money for districts’ daily operations mostly flat for the next two years. It does, however, fund a $122 million pension increase that was not included in the governor’s proposed budget for next two years.

Rep. Amanda Grosserode, R-Lenexa, argued that the cost of the pensions increase would have otherwise been passed onto school districts.

Money for pensions will not be flexible. Neither will the money slated for paying interest on bonds or funding special education.

But the rest of the money, which under the current system is slated for specific purposes, such as transportation, would be flexible to be used how school districts see fit.

“I believe our local districts know how to educate our kids better than we do,” Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe, one of the bill’s authors, during the debate.

“Change is hard. This is an emotional decision,” Ryckman acknowledged.

Rep. Jerry Lunn, R-Overland Park, argued that this would enable districts to offer pay raises to teachers.

Mark Desetti, legislative director for the Kansas National Education Association, the state’s biggest teachers union, called that unlikely as districts would still face the same expenses they do now.

“School boards still have to pay utility bills, fill the buses with gas, bring in the food, clean the buildings … so this idea that it’s a big benefit to teachers, it is absolutely not,” Desetti said.

‘Terrible position’

Opponents called for caution about scuttling the 23-year-old formula in favor of a policy that was only unveiled a week ago. The bill includes a sunset, so after the 2016-17 school year the state will be without a school finance formula unless lawmakers pass something new.

Rep. Don Hineman, R-Dighton, compared this to when he and his wife remodeled their farmhouse.

“Our plan didn’t involve lighting a match and burning the house to the ground. Instead we remodeled the bathrooms,” Hineman said.

About two hours later, Rep. Scott Schwab, R-Olathe, offered a retort.

“I’m not remodeling the bathroom. I’m taking down something that needs to be taken down,” Schwab said.

Schwab said that schools in his district receive about $12,000 in funding for each student – a figure that includes local and federal dollars – and questioned whether adding one more student to a classroom truly causes the cost of educating the class as whole to shoot up $12,000.

No school districts outside of Johnson County have actively backed the plan. The Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley districts have both offered conditional support.

“While the bill is not ideal, it represents a genuine effort to continue current funding levels for the next two years,” Tom Trigg, superintendent of Blue Valley schools, said in an e-mail.

Other large districts – Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City – all of which will see major funding reductions, have been outspoken in their opposition.

The bill restores the $28 million reduction to funding for the current school year made by the governor that went into effect earlier this month. But it also reduces equalization aid approved by the Legislature last session by about $51 million.

Wichita alone loses $4.8 million if the bill becomes law compared to if the Legislature took no action. Mike Rodee, a member of the Wichita school board, said this week the district would likely be forced to raise local property taxes or make cuts.

Doug Powers, the superintendent of the Maize school district, said the district has begun making cuts in anticipation of the legislation becoming law. The district will receive about $790,000 less than it planned at the beginning of the school year prior to both the governor’s reduction and the bill.

Just this week, the district eliminated a summer school program for elementary students. Other cuts include a Spanish teaching position, an art teacher and about one teacher from each core curriculum area in the district’s four secondary schools.

“We are just at the beginning of the list,” Powers said Thursday. “The size of the cut and the timing in the school year have put us in a terrible position.”

On the House floor, Rep. Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield, highlighted the unequal impact the bill would have across districts.

Winfield will lose about $253,000, said Trimmer using numbers from the Department of Education. Arkansas City, on the other hand, will gain more than $235,000, creating an overall difference of almost $490,000 despite the districts being only miles apart and similar in population, Trimmer said.

Later in the debate Rep. Don Hill, R-Emporia, noted that the few organizations actively backing the bill, such as the Kansas Policy Institute and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, were the same ones that pushed for “our flawed tax policy” in 2012.

House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs, D-Kansas City, sarcastically commended what he called “the anti-education lobbying effort.”

“Maybe this isn’t the great state of Kansas,” Burroughs said. “Maybe this is the great state of the Chamber of Commerce.”

Mike O’Neal, the chamber’s president, has previously said the organization’s support for the bill stems from a belief that current formula does not get enough money to the classroom and that block grants will enable districts to do so.

Ryckman did successfully attach an amendment meant to help school districts adversely affected by a bill the Legislature passed last year, which gave property tax relief to cement companies in southeastern Kansas.

Ryckman said he was alerted to the problem during a conference call with superintendents. Ryckman’s amendment will allow those districts to assess property values at a higher level, which will result in a funding increase.

Opponents said this amendment, which they perceived as special treatment for a few districts meant to draw in a few needed votes, was representative of the problems of the bill. Hineman, of Dighton, called it “raw, ugly politics.”

At the end of the grueling debate, Ryckman said he appreciated “the importance that every member in the body” placed on issue before they cast their vote.

This story was originally published March 12, 2015 at 7:23 AM with the headline "Kansas House advances bill to overhaul school funding."