Wichita school officials say they will not block GOP finance plan

Wichita school officials agreed not to stand in the way of a Republican-backed school finance plan that would shift money from districts’ operating budgets to pay for property tax relief.

Lawmakers began their special session Thursday morning, facing a June 30 deadline from the Kansas Supreme Court to fix inequities in school finance or risk the closure of the state’s school districts next month.

The court has instructed lawmakers to address the disparities that arise because property-poor districts cannot raise as much money from local property taxes as property-rich districts.

The Republican plan, developed through closed-door meetings with school superintendents, would spend $38 million to provide equalization aid for poor districts, a fix identified by the court.

However, $13 million of that money would come from cutting all school districts’ general state aid by 0.5 percent, which is used to pay the district’s daily expenses, such as teachers’ salaries.

Both the House and Senate budget committees approved versions of the bill Thursday, only a few hours after it had been unveiled, and Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, the Senate’s budget chairman, said lawmakers could vote on the bill as early as Friday.

The identical bills are HB 2001 in the House and SB 1 in the Senate.

Wichita school officials said they could accept the plan as a last resort.

Wichita Superintendent John Allison urged members of the House and Senate Budget committees to explore other options before moving forward with the cut, but said that if lawmakers exhaust “all of those funding alternatives, we would not object to funding a portion to the equity solution from a reduction in general state aid.”

Lynn Rogers, a member of the Wichita school board who is seeking a seat in the Kansas Senate, said the district’s main priority is to avoid a school shutdown.

“It’s kind of a hostage situation,” he said. “We’re being asked to come up with our own ransom.”

Kansas City, Kan., district officials, on the other hand, voiced opposition to the plan, noting that the court warned lawmakers not to run afoul of a requirement to adequately fund schools in its efforts to craft an equity fix.

The Supreme Court has yet to rule on whether Kansas schools are adequately funded.

“It’s not clear it’s going to pass the court,” said David Smith, spokesman for the Kansas City, Kan., districts. “If it doesn’t pass the court, we’ve gone backwards.”

Both districts are plaintiffs in a school funding lawsuit that has been waged against the state since 2010.

John Robb, one of the attorneys for the districts, said in an e-mail that the plan takes money out of schools’ right pocket to put it in their left pocket.

“The time for these shell games has passed. If the plan they are considering does not pass muster, we will most certainly see a school shutdown. … It is time to adopt a clean fix, assure that our schools will stay open and go home,” he said.

House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, bristled when asked if lawmakers would be hurt in the upcoming election by voting for a plan that cuts schools.

“I think every legislator here is pro-education,” Merrick said. “I mean, I get labeled as being anti-education. I’ve voted for more funding for education in my 16 years. I’ve voted for a lot of funding.”

“There’s more funding this year than there was last year, more last year than there was the year before,” he said. “It’s never going to be enough. I don’t think the lawsuit ever goes away. I don’t care. We can please the court, do everything they want, but … we’ve been having lawsuits on education for 50 years. And the lawyers are getting rich.”

The Wichita school district would see a $1.4 million cut to its general operating budget. Wichita residents, however, would gain $5.3 million in property tax relief, thanks to an increase in state aid to the local option budget.

Jim Freeman, chief financial officer for the Wichita school district, said the district could absorb the cut.

“We’re looking at it from the standpoint where, we don’t like it. We don’t like the general state aid cut, but if they can’t find any more money … our option is closing schools, and that’s going to cost us a lot more,” Freeman said.

The district also stands to gain 4.5 million in capital outlay dollars from a school finance fix, but that money can only be used for building and infrastructure costs. It can’t go toward daily expenses.

Freeman said a temporary shutdown could cost the district anywhere from $3 million to $10 million depending on how long it lasted. “It’s real hard to peg, but certainly more than what we’ll lose in state aid (under the Republican plan),” he said.

Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, blasted the Wichita school district on Twitter on Thursday morning, accusing Allison and others of agreeing to a bad deal.

“They sat in a board room about a month ago and cried about how they had to close Metro-Meridian (Alternative High School) and make all these cuts because of a lack of funding,” Ward said. “They get a court decision that supports their position, and then they cave.”

He said he tried to urge district officials to oppose any plan that cut classroom funding to fix equity.

“My aim is not to attack but to say, ‘I need you to be strong now. Don’t blink now,’ ” Ward said Thursday morning. “ ‘This is actually your time to push. You have some leverage and you have the ability and the power, as you’ve asked for many times.’ ”

In addition to reducing general state aid to schools, the bill would cut funding for virtual schools by $2.8 million and take $7.2 million from the state’s K-12 extraordinary needs fund, a pool of money intended to help districts cope with unforeseen expenses. That would still leave $8 million in the extraordinary needs fund.

Another $4.1 million would come from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the federally funded welfare program, and another $10.5 million would come from the state’s tobacco settlement.

Kansas faces a budget shortfall for the current year of $45 million, which means that other revenue sources are scarce.

Rep. Ron Ryckman, R-Olathe, the House budget chairman, said the bill would not be his first choice but is the best solution in the face of a possible shutdown.

“Any time you are in a compromise situation, you negotiate. You can’t get 100 percent of what you want. The courts put us in this position where they were going to close schools. That unifies all of us,” Ryckman said.

Ryckman participated in discussions with multiple school districts, including Wichita and Kansas City, to craft the plan.

He said those talks have opened up stronger lines of communication between school districts and lawmakers that will be important when the Legislature begins work on a new school finance formula next year. He emphasized that this bill is a short-term fix.

“This is just a one-year solution to keep our schools open,” Ryckman said. “As soon as this becomes a law and as soon as the courts allow our schools to stay open, we can start on this same collaboration that we just built to build a long-term solution. But we’ve got to get past this first.”

Superintendents from three Johnson County districts – Olathe, Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley – also participated and endorsed the plan despite the fact that it will cost their districts millions.

Jim Hinson, the superintendent for Shawnee Mission, said his district, which stands to lose $2.1 million, was willing to make that “sacrifice for the benefit of all.”

However, not all school districts saw the plan as beneficial.

Perry McCabe, the school finance manager for the Buhler school district, complained that rural school districts weren’t included in the closed-door negotiations.

“I don’t know how that group was picked,” he said. “It seemed overly heavy with urban and suburban school districts.”

Buhler stands to lose $55,000 in general state aid from the bill.

“We basically are going backwards, not forwards,” McCabe said.

Rep. Melissa Rooker, R-Fairway, said lawmakers have other options that they need to explore before moving the leadership-backed plan forward.

“This one is being treated like the only one available to us. And it is so inherently flawed,” Rooker said. “It’s a joke to think that we will satisfy the court by taking money out of the classroom to put into property tax relief.”

Rooker and a small coalition of Republicans are pushing for a bill that would take money from a variety of sources, including the state’s tobacco settlement, a job creation fund and motor vehicle fee fund, to avoid the cut to schools.

Rooker was blocked from introducing the bill herself because she does not sit on the House Appropriations Committee, but she said the bill may be offered in amendment form when the House holds a debate.

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 9:13 AM with the headline "Wichita school officials say they will not block GOP finance plan."