Kansas conservatives fail again in quest for big changes to school funding, oversight

Conservative Republicans in Kansas have spent years demanding that the Legislature stand up to the state Supreme Court after repeated rulings that lawmakers don’t adequately fund public schools.

They’ve threatened to change the state constitution. They’ve sought tighter controls over how schools spend money. They’ve pushed districts to spend their savings.

But this past week, just days ahead of a court-mandated deadline, lawmakers approved $90 million more for schools next year and a total of $360 million over the next four years.

Gov. Laura Kelly signed the measure sign into law on Saturday.

“We speak in ideals, but in the end you have to have majority votes,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican. “And there’s just been through the entire time of litigation, there’s always been enough people … to vote to write the check.”

The spending plan contains almost none of the major changes some conservatives have sought for years, and chatter about a constitutional amendment to limit the court hasn’t turned into action.

In the end, schools will spend money in basically the same way they do now.

Despite Republican supermajorities in both the House and Senate, conservatives have been unable to translate tough talk on education into law. And with a Democratic governor in power, they’ll have to contend with possible vetoes.

Many lawmakers are opposed to the aggressive changes that some conservatives want. They include Republicans willing to buck their own leadership to support funding increases. House Republican leaders opposed the $90 million plan, but dozens of rank-and-file members joined Democrats in voting for it.

Senate Republicans—including some very conservative members—also largely supported the plan in hopes the bill will end a nine-years-long lawsuit over education funding in Kansas.

“There were lots of accusations that anyone who supports this position must not be a Republican. I just want to say that I vote as Kansan, as an educator, a parent, spouse, daughter, a sibling,” Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, said during floor debate. “Why is it that when it’s a bill of this nature, then we need to pigeonhole people?”

The support for multiple funding increases has frustrated some Republicans. They contend the flow of money to schools limits the resources available to other parts of government, like social services or prisons.

“I want to build the buildings that we need. I want my kids to get a good education. But I want my school districts and the Supreme Court and everybody to just quit saying ‘we need more money, we need more money,’” Sen. Rob Olson, an Olathe Republican, said.

School districts say they’ve used previous funding increases to pay teachers more, hire additional staff and reduce class sizes.

Unified School District 233 in Olathe used its new dollars to add special education staff. U.S.D. 262 in Valley Center doubled the number of teachers focused on helping at-risk students. And in Colby, U.S.D. 315 added a school resource officer for safety, according to the Kansas Association of School Boards.

Lawmakers have competing desires when it comes to school funding, KASB lobbyist Mark Tallman said. The issue places conservatives between two foundational beliefs: that tax funds should be spent carefully and decisions on how to run school districts should be made locally, he said.

“They worry about waste and effectiveness, but at the same time, who ought to make that decision?” Tallman said. “And I really think in some ways you’re seeing that play out this year.”

No end until people ‘rise up’

Legislators have been wrestling with a lawsuit over school funding for the better part of a decade. Known as Gannon—for Luke Gannon, the son of a Wichita preacher who attended the city’s schools—it involves several districts that sued to secure more funding.

At the same time, Republicans have been trying to pass a constitutional amendment that would limit future lawsuits over funding.

The biggest names in Kansas Republican politics have lent their support. Gov. Sam Brownback, Gov. Jeff Colyer, 2018 Republican nominee for governor Kris Kobach, House Speaker Ron Ryckman and Senate President Susan Wagle have all backed an amendment.

An amendment made it to the House floor in 2018, but lawmakers never voted on it. Most agree it lacks the two-thirds support needed to pass the Legislature.

Some Republicans predict they’ll be able to act in future years, even if it’s unclear exactly when.

“I don’t know what the straw is that breaks the camel’s back,” Rep. Steve Huebert, a Valley Center Republican, said.

The next election could give amendment supporters the votes they need to pass it, Huebert said. Every legislative seat will be up for grabs in 2020.

Some Republicans say the $90 million funding plan will eventually prove unaffordable. If that happens, they suggest voters will revolt and elect more conservative lawmakers.

“I don’t think these lawsuits will ever end until the people rise up and fix the constitution, where there’s not litigation possible,” Masterson said.

Mark Desetti, a lobbyist with the Kansas National Education Association, is skeptical the school funding plan will one day sweep more conservative lawmakers into office.

If Kansas has a budget problem, voters will react to how lawmakers fix it, Desetti said. They don’t want a repeat of 2012 when Republican lawmakers approved sweeping income tax cuts, he contends.

“Let’s say we go into a recession. If we respond to that recession the way we reacted last time by enacting trickle-down economics, I don’t think that gets conservatives elected,” Desetti said.

Political reality

Negotiations over the $90 million school funding bill illustrate the limited power of conservatives right now to force major changes.

Some GOP lawmakers wanted to eliminate the final two years of funding increases currently in law. Others favored stripping out an automatic inflation adjustment for schools and require that superintendents certify their districts spend money in a way “reasonably calculated” for students to meet academic standards.

None of those ideas made it into the final proposal after Senate negotiators held their ground in opposing the changes. Supporters of the bill feared those changes would prompt Kelly to reject the plan.

In addition, some lawmakers say Kansas already has decent oversight of how education dollars are spent. The Kansas State Department of Education collects a wealth of data about schools.

“Once you really start getting into it, we see that there are already a lot of accountability measures in place,” Rep. Cindy Holscher, an Olathe Democrat, said.

The final compromise the Legislature approved does include modest requirements for districts to create new reports on the performance of each school and other changes, such as an audit of how much cash districts have on hand. Some Republicans say districts hold too much funding in reserve.

Still, it’s a far cry from past calls for aggressive measures, like a constitutional amendment.

“If they ever actually found the votes and took action, they’d lose their talking point,” said Rep. Brett Parker, an Overland Park Democrat.

On the other hand, Parker said there are numerous Republicans who have no interest in fighting the court.

He’s talking about lawmakers like Sen. John Skubal, an Overland Park Republican. Skubal takes a less expansive view of the Legislature’s role in education than some other Republicans.

“I think the Board of Education pretty much runs schools,” Skubal said. “We fund schools.”

This story was originally published April 7, 2019 at 5:30 AM.