Kansas lawmakers propose shifting school-funding control

Two Republican lawmakers on Tuesday floated the idea of giving the Kansas Department of Education control over school funding. The idea was proposed during a hearing on a bill meant to address the Kansas Supreme Court’s order to fix inequities among school districts.

During a Tuesday hearing by the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Gene Suellentrop, R-Wichita, and Rep. Marvin Kleeb, R-Overland Park, suggested the department might be better suited than the Legislature to determine how to distribute money to schools, citing the string of lawsuits the state has faced in the past two decades around school funding.

“It’s a very serious idea, because we have got to find a solution, and it doesn’t appear that what we’ve done over the last half-dozen years is going to answer the question,” Suellentrop said.

“So why don’t we let them, the education community, figure it out?”

Kleeb said the Legislature could pay the Department of Education through a block grant and have the agency, which answers to the state Board of Education, figure out how to distribute the money. He said this would take politics out of the process.

Deena Horst, a member of the board who represents North Central Kansas, was surprised to hear the suggestion.

“I think it’s pretty interesting that they continue to try to take away from our supervisor powers in standards … but now they want us to do that part, which really is in their bailiwick,” she said.

Suellentrop clarified that this would be a policy change to be considered next year or after that. Right now, lawmakers face the more pressing question of how to address the court’s demand that lawmakers fix inequities among school districts before July or risk the closure of schools.

HB 2731, which the committee reviewed on Tuesday, would give the Wichita school district $9.6 million in additional state aid next year, according to the most recent analysis by the Kansas Department of Education, slightly less than an initial estimate of $10.1 million.

All other Sedgwick County districts also gain in the bill, which brings $14.2 million more to the county’s school districts next year and increases state funding for school districts by $38 million statewide. Part of that money would come out of the state’s extraordinary-needs fund that was set up last year.

A significant portion of this money would go to property tax relief in Wichita and across the state rather than toward additional classroom aid.

However, some districts would lose funding compared to what they’re currently set to receive, which has irked many lawmakers from Johnson County.

Kleeb questioned whether this is fair, complaining that some school districts were being forced to subsidize others. He also pondered why the districts that gain from the bill weren’t advocating for it.

Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission, two Johnson County school districts that will lose more than $4 million combined from the bill, offered neutral testimony at the hearing.

“We have a bunch of winners here. Where are they?” Kleeb asked.

The Wichita school district’s lobbyist, Diane Gjerstad, attended the meeting.

“This is the first inning in the school finance game, and it’s going to be a long nine innings. …We don’t believe this will be the end product,” Gjerstad said when asked why she didn’t testify.

She said that the district appreciates the bill, which adds more funding for next year, but that the legislation fails to address the current school year and the previous year. The district thinks the court decision requires the state to restore lost funding for those two years as well, and its attorneys have sought clarification from the court on that matter.

Mark Tallman, spokesman for the Kansas Association of School Boards, called the House bill the best option anyone has put forward so far to address the court ruling.

The Senate will hold a hearing Wednesday on a separate bill that would not add any new funding for next school year and would instead shift money among districts.

This story was originally published March 15, 2016 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Kansas lawmakers propose shifting school-funding control."