District ‘premiums’ pay for extraordinary needs fund

Some school districts are irritated that the money that created the state’s extraordinary needs fund came from a fee charged to the districts, yet it can be extraordinarily difficult to get back even what they paid in. The Wichita school district, for example, was charged $1.1 million by the state to help finance the new fund, but the state has yet to approve any of the $980,000 in extra funding the district is seeking to help educate refugee children. Valley Center had to pay $64,000 to the fund and will get back about $61,000. But Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ty Masterson, R-Andover, compared what the districts were charged to an insurance premium and said that districts shouldn’t necessarily expect to get back what they put in. “That’s not how that operates,” he said. “That’s not how insurance operates.” – Phillip Brownlee

This story was originally published September 1, 2015 at 7:05 PM.