School funding cut isn’t ‘leftist’

It’s fine for the Legislature to review how the state equalizes its supplemental aid to public schools. Perhaps the calculation should be adjusted so that the aid better targets poorer school districts.

But such a change should apply to future years. Making the change be retroactive, as Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, wants to do, would put school districts in a difficult position of making budget adjustments when the school year is more than half over.

Masterson is pushing Senate Bill 71, which would reduce supplemental aid by $39 million this school year. The Wichita school district’s share of this funding reduction would be $3.9 million.

Masterson claims that the reduction would not be a funding cut because the aid significantly increased this year (per an order from the Kansas Supreme Court). Thus, he argued, school districts would merely be getting a smaller increase than they expected. He even said that calling this a “cut” was “liberal” and “leftist.”

But school districts built their budgets and signed contracts based on this funding commitment. Breaking that promise more than halfway through the school year could leave districts with few options for reducing spending.

It is also important to understand that this aid does not increase total state and local funding to school districts. Rather, its purpose is to equalize the cost of local option budgets among districts by having the state pay a share of it, thus reducing the local property tax burden in many districts.

So while the state’s supplemental aid cost increased, school districts didn’t get more total funding (unless they increased their LOBs). But reducing the state’s share of this funding after local property tax rates have been set would very much be a funding cut.

For the editorial board, Phillip Brownlee

This story was originally published February 4, 2015 at 12:56 PM with the headline "School funding cut isn’t ‘leftist’."