Should your address determine your school? KS lawmakers seek open enrollment requirement
Last year, as the clock ran down on the 2021 Kansas Legislative session, a proposal to dramatically expand parents’ ability to use state dollars on private or home schooling fell short in the Senate by one vote.
The education savings account program, which would have allowed Kansas families to spend the state dollars budgeted for their children on private school tuition, proved too far-reaching for several Senate Republicans, who said the policy would harm their public school districts.
Ten months later, the concept is back. A House education panel considered a renewed proposal for education savings accounts, along with a bill to allow Kansas students to enroll in any public district statewide, regardless of where they live.
This year’s savings account plan comes with eligibility revisions. It would be available to any student receiving free and reduced lunch as well as students identified by their districts as at-risk. Like last year, the policies are likely to be folded in with overall education funding proposals.
“The idea of school choice and making sure that money follows the student is always alive,” Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican and chair of the House K-12 budget committee said.
School choice advocates gained momentum last year, capitalizing on parents’ frustration over COVID-19 to successfully expand programs nationwide. They say their movement has only grown stronger amid calls for greater parental involvement, a product in part of anxiety over baseless claims that critical race theory is being taught in K-12 classrooms.
Now, Kansas is one of 32 states once again pursuing expansion of savings account programs. The issue is expected to figure prominently in the 2022 midterms and the Kansas Governor’s race.
“Increasingly this is going to be an issue where parents are flexing their muscles and politicians should pay heed,” said Jason Bedrick, policy director at Ed Choice, an policy group that supports voucher and voucher-like programs.
The proposals have already sparked push-back from public education advocates for funneling public dollars into private education and interfering with local control of Kansas districts. Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, told a House committee considering the bills that he brought extensive data last year to oppose the measure “but you passed the bill (in the House) anyways.”
“This isn’t about school choice. This is about what we believe the overarching strategy of this legislature is, which is, let’s use this moment, this global pandemic that has destroyed economies, brought our nation to a standstill, let’s use this, not to pour resources into a moment of crisis, but to further cut them. To point the finger of shame and blame at our schools and our teachers,” said Marcus Baltzell, with the Kansas National Education Association.
“And they’re writing bill after bill after bill to seize upon this opportunity to advance their agenda.”
Open Enrollment
In addition to renewing the existing push for voucher-like programs, lawmakers are pushing to insist all Kansas schools accept Kansas students regardless of whether they live within district boundaries. The law would bring Kansas in line with 28 other states mandating open enrollment.
Currently, that decision is left up to individual Kansas school districts. The bill would require each school board to adopt a policy determining the district’s capacity for accepting non-resident students at each grade level by Jan. 1, 2023.
Proponents said the bill would open up opportunities for students across Kansas who may be better served in another school system. Current district lines, advocates said, were arbitrarily drawn and have harmed low-income students.
“Parents made one thing their number one issue (last year) and that was educational opportunities for their students, for their children,” said John Lueth, a lobbyist for Americans for Prosperity, the libertarian advocacy group backed by Charles Koch and his late brother David. “We need to create an opportunity to allow children to have their unique individual needs met by an educational system. This piece of legislation will do just that.”
Adam Pugh, a state senator in Oklahoma who advocated for a similar bill last year, said it had proven transformational in the state.
The legislation, he said, would be aimed at “giving the children the ability to transfer to any school that fits their needs.”
But the law left Oklahoma school boards scrambling to set capacity limits and superintendents across Kansas offered verbal and written testimony opposing the policy, citing financial and local control concerns.
De Soto Superintendent Frank Harwood said districts already have the option of opening enrollment to students who live beyond district boundaries. Requiring districts to do so, he said, is an “encroachment on local control.”
“There are a number of districts across the state that currently accept non-resident transfers because they have declining enrollment and because they have space in their classrooms. And that’s actually a good thing for them to accept non-resident transfers,” Harwood said. “It’s the requirement to take non-resident transfers when you’re already having capacity issues that makes it difficult.”
He argued the bill could have consequences for districts like De Soto, which already grapples with class sizes and other logistical challenges as enrollment grows throughout the school year due to the Johnson County city’s booming housing market and population.
“We have new homes being built and families moving into them during the school year. … We’re still in a position this year where we had to add sections during the school year because of the growth that happened after August,” Harwood said. “Being able to predict how many seats we’ll have early on, knowing that we will continue to pick up resident students throughout the school year, it gets to be difficult.”
Andover Superintendent Brett White argued the bill would “lead to overcrowded classrooms, upset parents, and additional burdens placed on educators.”
Both Harwood and White are concerned that non-resident students who transfer after districts’ official enrollment count in September would mean funding for those students would not be available for that school year.
“Because funding for brick-and-mortar students is based on the previous year’s count,our district would likely need to hire additional staff when we wouldn’t receive any funding for the out-of-district students until the following year,” White wrote.
Tallman said the legislation would still leave underprivileged students behind because travel costs aren’t included.
90% of school boards, Tallman said, already allow non resident students. But they want to maintain that control.
“As they are responsible for the residents of their district and the children of the residents that elect them, that has to be their priority,” Tallman said.
But proponents dismissed those concerns, citing the benefit that could be done for students who do take advantage.
“What I hear is all but excuses and reasons that kids should not have that choice but that systems make that choice,” Williams said.
