Kansas schools can’t afford to have Derek Schmidt pulling their budget strings

Four-day school weeks. Depleted resources. Overflowing class sizes. Crumbling and leaky ceilings. As a teacher, I remember what a nightmare the era of former Gov. Sam Brownback was for students, parents, and schools across Kansas, and I’m not eager to revisit it.

Thanks to Gov. Laura Kelly, the days of drastically underfunded public schools are a thing of the past. For four years in a row, Kelly has fully funded our public schools — with bipartisan support — reinvesting in our students and reigniting Kansas’ commitment to public education.

Now, Kelly is running for her second term to build on all the progress we’ve made under her watch during these last four years. The Republican front-runner, Derek Schmidt, supported keeping education funding low as a state senator, and as attorney general stood behind Brownback as he underfunded education to fund the extreme and unpopular “tax experiment.”

As attorney general, Schmidt spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars defending Brownback’s deficient funding of Kansas public schools, despite his responsibility to ensure those schools were adequately funded. Per-student education funding fell from $4,400 to $3,780 — and it showed.

In 2013, state judges ruled that Kansas’ school funding level was unconstitutionally low, and demanded via a court order that it be restored. Thinking the law doesn’t apply to him, Schmidt ignored his legal obligation, and instead worked with Brownback and the Republican-controlled Legislature to pass a series of bills that barely addressed school funding and were later thrown out by the Kansas Supreme Court.

These kinds of cuts to education funding were a direct result of Brownback’s “tax experiment” that prioritized the wealthy over the needs of our students. These harmful policies were reversed only when Kelly was elected, keeping her campaign promise to be the “education governor” that we all desperately needed, and passing a bipartisan education plan to fully fund our schools.

Have we already forgotten the damage Sam Brownback and Derek Schmidt caused our public school system? Ask any teacher, and the answer is a resounding no. If elected, Schmidt is sure to take Kansas back to the days of underfunded public schools. Our teachers, students, and schools cannot afford to go backward. We must reelect Gov. Laura Kelly and keep our schools strong.