School finance bill heads to Senate floor; Kansas House plan dies in committee

A bill that reshuffles school funding dollars – but keeps overall spending flat – will head to the floor of the Kansas Senate.

Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, the bill’s author, calls it the "purest response" to a recent ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court to fix inequities in school funding. The bill was approved by the Senate Ways and Means Committee Thursday after a few minutes of polite discussion, a striking contrast to the bitter scene which took place in the House Appropriations Committee an hour before.

The House plan, which would have had more money to address the ruling, faced a barrage of criticism from Republican lawmakers Thursday and was abandoned without the committee even taking a vote.

The Senate bill would send about $5.5 million in additional state aid to the Wichita school district, but the bulk of that would go to property tax relief for Wichita residents. Only about $500,000 would actually go to the schools.

Diane Gjerstad, a spokeswoman for the district, said that would amount to about a $10 gain for each student in the district. She called it "far short" of the court’s demand that lawmakers address inequities in school funding.

"We don’t think it matches the court ruling," she said.

The district stood to gain about $9.6 million from the House plan – a little more than half would have gone to property tax relief, while the rest would go to schools.

HB 2731 would have tapped the state’s extraordinary need fund and the state’s general fund to spend about $39 million more to fix inequities statewide, but some school districts would have still experience as loss.

That bill was scrapped Thursday after lawmakers criticized Wichita and other plaintiff districts at a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee for using taxpayer money to fund the lawsuit.

Rep. Jerry Lunn said all the House bill would do increase the local property tax rate in the Blue Valley district and decrease the rate in Wichita. "The courts are threatening to close schools over property tax valuations," Lunn complained.

He slammed Wichita and the other plaintiff districts for pursuing the lawsuit with taxpayer money.

No Wichita lawmakers jumped to the district’s defense. Rep. Mark Hutton, R-Wichita, joined his colleagues in heaping criticism at the districts, pointing out that none of the plaintiffs testified on behalf of the bill.

"I don't think they care because this doesn't put any money in their pockets," Hutton said, noting that most of the money goes toward property tax relief.

Both bills restore the state’s old equalization formula, which gives aid to property-poor districts, which are unable to raise as much money per pupil from local property tax as property-rich districts. That’s why most of the aid goes toward property tax relief rather than classrooms.

Dropping oil prices have caused some Western Kansas districts that were once considered property rich to fall in overall rankings, pushing up many Johnson County districts.

That means many Johnson County districts stand to receive less state aid if lawmakers equalize funding than they would under the state’s current block grant system, which was set up last year, stirring animosity among many of that county’s lawmakers.

"I'll flat out say it. The court was wrong," said Rep. Amanda Grosserode, R-Lenexa. "They're wrong because they don't understand how we fund our schools."

On the Senate side, Sen. Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, said he was “still stinging” over the loss of dollars for Johnson County districts.

Masterson said that it’s intuitive that Johnson County would receive less under equalization because of the wealth in that county.

Masterson said he looks forward to debating his bill on the Senate floor, but he expects resistance in the House.

"If there was that much consternation in the House over their bill, I would be quite certain they would have consternation with this plan as well," Masterson said.

"Welcome to legislation," he said. "The first thing out of the gate is almost never the end-all, be-all."

The backlash the House plan faced could signal a slow process ahead for addressing the court’s ruling, which only deals with the issue of whether school funding is equitable. The court has yet to rule on whether school funding is adequate.

Rep. Marvin Kleeb, R-Overland Park, suggested that lawmakers spend the next five weeks – including a scheduled April break – crafting a solution to both the equity and adequacy questions.

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, called Masterson’s plan "a cynical approach" to addressing the court ruling because it cuts money from all districts’ general operating budgets to pay for the increase in equalization aid.

Attorneys for Schools for Fair Funding, the group representing Wichita and other plaintiff districts, have also said that the court ruling requires lawmakers to spend more money to satisfy the ruling. The court ruling states that any fix on equity should not run "afoul of the adequacy requirement."

"My guess is the courts did not intend for us to redistribute an inadequate amount of money," Kelly told Masterson.

He replied, "That's your opinion of their opinion."

Rep. Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, said that if he were a Martian he would be laughing at the way Kansas does school finance. He said that the state should have defied the court when faced with earlier school finance rulings and predicted that more lawsuits would be filed in the future.

“There needs to be a fix, which is permanent, where we just put our food down and say, 'This is the end of it,’” Rhoades said.

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 11:46 AM with the headline "School finance bill heads to Senate floor; Kansas House plan dies in committee."