School funding overhaul passes Kansas House
TOPEKA – The Kansas House narrowly passed a top Gov. Sam Brownback policy initiative to overall school funding Friday.
The House voted 64-57 to approve the bill and will now send it to the Senate.
Aid to public schools is the biggest item in the state budget, and settling the amount is key to resolving other spending and tax issues. The plan incorporates Brownback’s proposal to give districts “block grants” based on their current aid for the next two school years, until lawmakers draft a new formula. The governor and other Republicans say the current formula is too complex and directs too much away from classroom learning.
A panel of district judges ruled in December that the state needs to spend at least $548 million more to fund schools at a constitutionally appropriate level under the formula.
The measure won first-round approval Thursday on a tight 64-58 vote, with 30 Republicans joining all 28 House Democrats in opposing it.
Many educators dislike the plan because the state’s 286 school districts would lose $51 million of the $4.1 billion in state aid they expected to receive for the current school year.
Legislators who drafted the plan have argued that it would give schools predictable but flexible funding through the 2016-17 school year in difficult budget times. The plan also would help the state control its costs by junking its per-student aid formula, which in some years forces unanticipated and automatic increases in aid.
But, skeptical lawmakers have said that the funds appropriated to schools in the new plan are subject to change, and without the guidelines set by the current formula there’s no guarantee that schools will end up getting the money.
Brownback and the GOP-dominated Legislature must close a budget shortfall projected at nearly $600 million for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The state’s fiscal problems arose after lawmakers aggressively cut personal income taxes in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging to stimulate the economy.
Other lawmakers pointed out that the nearly 100-page bill was introduced less than a week before the chamber was asked to vote on it, giving them little time to determine its impact on school districts and how some of its provisions would function.
In the House Appropriations Committee hearing on the bill, the only people who spoke in favor of it were representatives of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, the state’s largest business association, the Kansas Policy Institute, a conservative think tank and tea party group Kansas for Liberty. School districts, teachers organizations and superintendents testified against the bill.
This story was originally published March 13, 2015 at 11:20 AM with the headline "School funding overhaul passes Kansas House."