KS Senate education chiefs offer school funding increase ...

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By Gene Meyer | Kansas Reporter

TOPEKA ? The big assignment for the?Kansas Senate Education Committee?leaders this week entails coming up with a way to finance the state?s schools.

Efforts toward the plan ? one that both lawmakers and taxpayers can live with ? so far have faltered.

?Money is coming in,? said state Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, education committee?s chairwoman.

?State revenues were $29 million over projections in February,? Schodorf said. ?We need to restore funds we cut before.?

Schodorf and state Sens. John Vratil, R-Leawood, and Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, last week introduced legislation to increase school funding by $100 million in the next two years.

The plan would use money from already increasing state tax revenue, which otherwise would be part of a possible $350 million in unbudgeted money when the state?s fiscal year ends June 30.?

Vratil and Hensley are, respectively, the vice chair and ranking minority party member of the Senate Education Committee, a panel overseeing school and school finance issues in the state.

The committee Wednesday will hold hearings on the proposal, during which time it will?outline more details and the projected costs to the state.

The new plan is an alternative to a more sweeping rewrite of school finance rules that Gov. Sam Brownback proposed in January, and to a more targeted property tax-relief plan. The tax plan, proposed in January by House and Senate Democrats, would allow increased per-pupil spending in Kansas schools.?

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Both the school finance and tax?proposals hit legislative snags in February. Legislators said Brownback?s plan may need to be postponed another year for additional study. House Republicans who voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats? tax plan in February have since recalled it for another look.

?Yes, we had a recession, which forced us to cut school spending, but now the money is coming in,? Schodorf said. ?We need to increase funding for the 2013 school year to show we?re serious about restoring that funding.?

Brownback remains adamant that Kansas school funding needs a more fundamental fix than either of the other two proposals offer, said Sherriene Jones-Sontag, his press secretary.

?Our state?s current funding formula is broken,? Jones-Sontag said. ?More money without reform is not the solution.?

House Speaker Mike O?Neal, R-Hutchinson, said he thinks other solutions would be better for Kansas taxpayers.

The 2011 Kansas Legislature gave schools the?authority to use some $154 million in allocated but unused special funds to help cover general operating expenses, O?Neal said.

?Only 77 districts signed up to use this funding and only spent $24 million, leaving $130 million to be used,? he said. ?School districts did not utilize the available funding. This brings me to the conclusion that they do not need the funding.?

O?Neal said he wants to offer districts similar authority this year to use the money to help reduce local property taxes.

But even the school districts are divided.

?We like and have long advocated for more local control over our finances,? said Gene Johnson, superintendent of the Shawnee Mission school district in Johnson County.

The county spans Kansas City area suburbs with some of the highest property values in the state, and school boards there generally favor Brownback?s plan for allowing them to more liberally use property taxes.

?I don?t want to sound negative, but our current 20-year-old school funding formula is worn out,? Johnson said.

But that is not the sentiment among many of the 55 Kansas school districts that, in 2010, sued the state to have funding restored to the levels prescribed in the state?s formula, said John Robb, the districts? lead attorney in Newton.?

?We believe the courts have clearly stated that school funding is a state obligation,? Robb said.

?That funding needs to be equalized, it needs to be appropriated and relief for local property taxes needs to be funded.?

Making up the difference would be jarring for the government and taxpayers, Robb said.

But if Brownback and state legislators are willing to give up an estimated $2.7 billion in tax revenue ? which would vanish if their plans to abolish state income taxes were passed ? ?maybe they would give up a billion dollars for schools, too,? he said.

The latest Senate plan would increase base state per student by $74 per pupil, to $3,854, in the 2012-13 school year, and by $74 again, to $3,926 per pupil, in 2013-14. It also would allow local school boards to supplement that aid by raising as much as 35 percent of their districts? total state aid in local property taxes. Kansas limits those increases, which are known as local option budgets, to 31 percent now.

Basic state aid reflects about a third of total education spending in Kansas, the part that comes from general tax revenues. Federal aid to education programs nearly?triples the base state aid.

Brownback, a Republican, has proposed raising the state?s current $3,780 per pupil basic state to $4,492 in 2014, but scrapping many of the intricate additional calculations and additional payments Kansas allows for at-risk or economically disadvantaged students. That plan is in the Senate Education Committee, and, Vratil said recently, it may require more study than legislators can accomplish this session.

Hensley and other Kansas Democrats have offered their own plan, which would use about $90 million of the expected cash reserves to provide property tax relief in school districts across the state. That plan passed the Kansas House, but Republicans?contend some terms of bill were misrepresented, and have?called it back for reconsideration.

?The funding formula is not broken,? Hensley said.

And the system doesn?t work, either, said Derrick Sontag, head of the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which advocates lower taxes and smaller government, .

?We need something that focuses less on dollars and more on student achievement,? Sontag said. ?We?ve spent a lot of money on school funding the last 10 to 15 years, but the results in student achievement have been pretty stagnant.?

Source: http://statehousenewsonline.com/2012/03/05/ks-senate-education-chiefs-offer-school-funding-increase/

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