Kansas school funding bills advance to the full Legislature

A school equalization plan is headed to the full Kansas Legislature, with lawmakers hoping to approve the measure before they leave Friday for a monthlong break.

The Legislature’s two budget committees advanced nearly identical bills Wednesday despite opposition from the Kansas City, Kan., and Wichita school districts. The House and Senate could vote on the bills Thursday.

“I think it’s imperative because of the dire situation,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican and Senate Ways and Means Committee chairman, about the push to act this week.

The Kansas Supreme Court last month ordered the Legislature to equalize state aid among poorer and wealthier districts by June 30 or public schools in the state wouldn’t open for the 2016-17 school year.

Cynthia Lane, superintendent of the Kansas City, Kan., district, told lawmakers Wednesday that the proposal falls short of the court’s directive. Her district and the Wichita district are plaintiffs in the case, Gannon v. Kansas.

“This does not resolve the equity issue,” Lane said. “It redistributes the same amount of money that was deemed inequitable.”

The proposal uses a less generous equalization formula for a category of state aid called “local option budget.” The funds are then used for “hold harmless” assistance to keep districts from losing state aid next year.

Unlike previous proposals, no districts lose funds under the one-year plan, but very few districts receive additional money. The plan requires only about $2 million in additional state spending.

Jim Freeman, chief financial officer of the Wichita district, testified that under the proposal, districts are essentially “self-funding” the plan, and he agreed with Lane that more dollars are needed to make it pass muster with the court.

“Our position is that rather than equalizing down, we need to equalize up,” Freeman said.

Typically, he said, “hold harmless” provisions are accomplished by adding money to the process.

Masterson said he was confident from a staff analysis that the equalization plan narrows the gap between the poorest and wealthiest districts, and that’s what the court intended in the “equity” portion of its ruling.

Whether the state needs to appropriate additional aid to schools will be decided in the “adequacy” phase of the Gannon case coming later, he said.

Sen Jim Denning, an Overland Park Republican, reminded the district officials that lawmakers also are dealing with a serious budget shortfall.

“The state we’re in right now, there is no additional funding available,” Denning said.

Sen. Laura Kelly, a Ways and Means Committee member and a Topeka Democrat, voted against advancing the bill. The budget certainty for school districts in the plan is the good news, she said, “but knowing that you don’t have enough coming is the bad news.”

It doesn’t make sense that the hold harmless fund isn’t additional money, Kelly said.

“All we did was play with the formula to free up a bunch of money,” she said. “We call it holding harmless, but I don’t see it that way.”

Under an earlier equalization proposal, the Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission and Olathe districts would have lost millions in state aid next year. The new proposal holds all districts harmless, so the effect for most districts is flat.

The Shawnee Mission district, for instance, would see about a $3 million decrease in local option budget aid, but it would receive that amount in hold harmless aid.

Shawnee Mission superintendent Jim Hinson spoke in favor of the plan at the Ways and Means hearing, saying it provided stability for school districts. He thanked lawmakers for including a hold harmless provision.

“It doesn’t create a system of winners and losers,” Hinson said about the plan.

Blue Valley interim superintendent Todd White agreed that the bill provides budget certainty for the districts, saying the plan was “not only critical, but the best available option we have, given the circumstances the court has mandated.”

The equalization plan addresses the 2016-17 school year only. With that settled, lawmakers said, they could focus on writing a new overall school financing formula. Last year, the Legislature enacted a two-year block grant program for districts until the Legislature could devise a new formula.

This story was originally published March 23, 2016 at 11:40 AM with the headline "Kansas school funding bills advance to the full Legislature."