KC’s early childhood education tax levy bill dies in General Assembly

A proposed August tax levy election in Kansas City for universal prekindergarten died Friday.

The Missouri Senate finished its business without taking up a bill that the Kansas City Early Learning Commission said it needed to be able to secure funding solely for prekindergarten programs.

The future is unclear, said Kansas City lawyer Herb Kohn, who been one of the leaders of what has been a three-year effort so far. “We’ll probably need to step back and reassess.”

SB 996 had garnered strong support, having passed with heavy majorities in the Senate and the House. But it snagged in the final week because amendments were added that put the brakes on its progress. Bill sponsor Sen. David Pearce got the House to remove the concerning amendments late Thursday night, but the bill never made it back onto the floor for a vote.

The bill was needed to ensure that new revenue generated by a tax levy would go solely to early childhood education programming within the boundaries of the Kansas City school district. As state law stands, public charter schools inside the district would have access to as much as 40 percent of the funding without any binding regulation on how to spend it.

The bill would have enabled the Kansas City school district to collect the levy — if voters approved it — and pass the revenue through to the Early Learning Commission to administer programming. The funding also would have been made available to public charter schools or private schools that qualify.

The charter schools supported the bill.

The Kansas City school board had planned to take up the election proposal Wednesday, possibly to vote on whether to put the measure on the Aug. 2 ballot. The Early Learning Commission was proposing a $1.04 increase to the district’s current $4.95 levy. The legislative inaction, however, takes the August election plan off the table, Kohn said.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 5:16 PM with the headline "KC’s early childhood education tax levy bill dies in General Assembly."