Draft report on Kansas schools strikes conservative themes

A draft report presented Tuesday proposed big changes to the Kansas public school system and featured conservative themes, from privatizing some school services to decrying the regulatory burden of accepting federal education funds.

Lawmakers on a special schools committee asked for a rewrite of the draft, so it has been temporarily tabled. Legislators critical of the report called it a narrow and slanted version of the testimony they had heard and an attack on public education.

The Special Committee on K-12 Student Success, a 15-member committee of House and Senate members, was charged with making recommendations on school finance and on ways to improve student performance. It is dominated by conservative Republicans.

The report called for an overhaul of the state funding system for schools but didn’t advocate a specific financing plan.

Recommendations included using regional centers as a way to save money on school district services such as food, transportation and maintenance, as well as the possibility of outsourcing such functions to private companies.

The report said the burden of federal education funding was a “cost driver,” requiring testing and record keeping. The report recommended state oversight of local school bond proposals. And it questioned the value of the state’s annual standardized tests, recommending that the state should consider paying for all students to take the ACT college exam.

Lawmakers agreed Tuesday to have the legislative research staff rewrite the report. It will be considered at the committee’s next meeting, which wasn’t scheduled.

Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe, proposed the rewrite. He didn’t voice objections to the report but said the text should be more closely tied to testimony from the committee’s hearings.

Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield, was critical of the draft.

“The report was very partisan and didn’t include a lot of information,” he said. “I think it was very anti-public education.”

Rep. Melissa Rooker, a moderate Fairway Republican, said the report includes “black helicopter stuff” reflecting distrust of the federal government, opposition to multistate academic standards adopted for Kansas schools and support for giving parents tax-funded vouchers they could use at private schools.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka and a committee member, said the glaring problem was that the report didn’t recommend a new financing formula for schools.

“We have obviously fallen short of that charge,” he said.

The Legislature replaced a longstanding per-pupil spending formula with temporary block grant funding in the previous session, with the intent of eventually crafting a new financing formula.

Hensley said much of the draft report seemed to closely resemble material and testimony from the Kansas Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.

Rep. Ron Highland, R-Wamego and committee chairman, said he was the author of the draft report. He said he understood committee members’ desire to have it redrafted.

“It’s all part of the process,” he said.

Highland said the committee was not required to come up with a new financing formula but was charged with making recommendations that would fit into a new formula.

The report said that its call for sweeping change should not be misconstrued as an indictment of school districts or the education system.

“Educators and legislators alike have no doubt acted with the best of intentions, but the old funding system simply hasn’t produced the necessary and desired results,” the report said.

This story was originally published January 5, 2016 at 4:59 PM with the headline "Draft report on Kansas schools strikes conservative themes."