Posted on Mon, Oct. 19, 2009

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Kansas Views

Consolidation —Last week the House Appropriations Committee started discussing school consolidation during a hearing on budget problems. One lawmaker spoke in favor of merging districts. Which part of the state did he represent? A.) A rich city in Johnson County. B.) A rural area in western Kansas. We hope you guessed the one from Johnson County, because that means you understand the dynamics of this ongoing debate. Lawmakers from urban areas argue that consolidation is swell, while rural ones understand that merging school districts will affect more than education. It can devastate entire communities. For consolidation savings to be realized, schools must close and jobs disappear, including janitors, teachers and principals. When those classrooms and jobs are eliminated, then families vanish, also. Local businesses close or move when there are no more customers and no labor pool. That's a huge price to pay, considering consolidation will have little effect on total state education spending for kindergarten through high school, which is nearly $4 billion of the state's total budget of nearly $20 billion.— Salina Journal

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Consolidation of government in Kansas continues to be a largely untapped opportunity to save money in a time of lean taxpayer resources. Now is the time to push this issue. It is important to clarify that the discussion here mainly is about school districts. It is possible to eliminate duplication of superintendents and district staffs without compromising a single school. Closing schools has been driven by population shifts, but it makes little sense to watch that happen while few school districts actually collapse.— Hutchinson News

Preserve prairie — It's time to get behind efforts to preserve our vanishing American Serengeti, the tallgrass prairie. The latest, boldest and perhaps most important effort to that end is the Flint Hills Legacy Conservation Area, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposal to preserve as many as 2 million acres of remaining, pristine tallgrass prairie. That would constitute a band about 20 miles wide, stretching roughly from the Nebraska border to the Oklahoma border, west of Topeka and east of Wichita. The proposal seeks to buy "conservation easements," agreements with private landowners that they'd continue to be good stewards of the land and protect the native prairie for future generations. Landowners would agree to continue managing land in exactly the manner it's been managed. The plan deserves strong support and, eventually, federal funding. It preserves the ecosystem and offers a road map forward.— Kansas City Star

Work together — When legislators begin the 2010 session on Jan. 11, they'll have a rare opportunity. They'll have the chance to put politics on the back burner, because, apparently, they will be led by a governor who has chosen to do just that. Gov. Mark Parkinson continues to stand by his statements that he will not seek the governor's seat in 2010 nor any other public office. Although the news about the state's finances may be dreary, the air in the Statehouse may be clearer than ever. We hope legislators and the governor will enter the session with a greater level of trust that will allow both sides to honestly look at issues that previously have been political impossibilities. —Lawrence Journal- World

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