Wichita schools will try to sway governor, lawmakers to OK money for refugee students

Gov. Sam Brownback and legislative leaders will weigh a request from the Wichita school district for extra money to help students arriving as refugees from war-torn countries.

The State Finance Council, which is chaired by the governor and includes lawmakers from both parties, took no action on the district’s request for nearly $1 million to offer language and emotional support to students arriving from Somalia, Myanmar and other countries when it met in August. The council will take up the issue Monday.

Many of the students arrive with limited English skills and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s important to remember that they are fleeing persecution and war and oftentimes they have lived in circumstances where they have not had education available to them,” said Diane Gjerstad, spokeswoman for the district. “We want to catch them up. We want to make certain that they are fluent in English and they are able to be successful in their new country.”

The district is seeking money from the state’s extraordinary need fund, which was created after the Legislature decided to eliminate the state’s school finance formula and fund districts through block grants during the last legislative session.

Each district’s block-grant funding was based on enrollment numbers from the last school year. Gjerstad said the district has received 92 new refugee students since then and expects another 140 to be placed with the district over the course of the school year.

If the district’s request is approved, the money would go toward hiring new teachers and paraprofessionals to assist the teachers in special classrooms for students with high needs and limited English skills.

Gjerstad said refugee agencies began receiving new families in October with the beginning of the federal fiscal year. Two nonprofit groups, Episcopal Wichita Area Refugees Ministries and the International Rescue Committee, have been working with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement to resettle families in Wichita.

Lawmakers said in August that they were sympathetic to the district’s request but wanted to wait for more information on the refugee students.

Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, the Senate’s budget chairman and a member of the council, said he’s interested in the actual numbers rather than the projections and wants to compare that number with Wichita’s overall enrollment.

The Wichita school district had 47,066 full-time students enrolled when the block grant was calculated last session and was set to receive $379 million under the block grant for this school year, according to numbers posted on the Kansas Department of Education’s website in June.

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Wichita schools will try to sway governor, lawmakers to OK money for refugee students."