Don’t let out-of-state dark money defund Kansas kids’ education | Opinion

Four Kansas school districts — Shawnee Mission, Olathe, Kansas City, Kansas, and Topeka — are now under federal investigation after a Washington dark money group filed a complaint. On paper, they’ll say it’s about Title IX and student privacy. In reality, it’s D.C. bullies using federal muscle to micromanage local schools already stretched thin.

I read the entire complaint. It’s not a smoking gun. It’s a binder of old policies about gender identity, training slides from almost a decade ago and cherry-picked quotes. That’s not evidence of harm. It’s evidence of schools working overtime to keep kids safe. None of these districts has reported receiving a parent or student complaint on these issues.

Yet the first anyone hears of it is when the feds arrive, threatening to pull all their funding. Shawnee Mission says it’s the first investigation letter they’ve ever received that explicitly warns D.C. could sue them, shut them down, or cut every dollar of federal funding. That’s not an investigation; it’s a shakedown.

Ask yourself: If a new law banned assault rifles, would any Kansan accept shutting down a gun range over a seven-year-old slideshow? Of course not. New rules shouldn’t be weaponized retroactively when the facts on the ground have changed.

This hysteria isn’t about pronouns. It’s about power and dollars. Every time we yank money out of classrooms for private operators or state budget schemes, our kids lose. Federal threats like this cut tutors, counselors, and special-ed supports first. That’s the “defund the kids” movement, and children can’t vote to stop it.

Ironically, on the same day this investigation was announced, a Donald Trump-appointed judge struck down the Trump administration’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion orders because they violated the law and trampled on educators’ rights. That campaign also threatened to take every dollar of federal funding from schools that kept lawful diversity programs. Now, the same D.C. machine is swinging Title IX like a bat at vulnerable Kansas students.

Who’s behind this? The complaint comes from leaders tied to the for-profit college industry and long-running campaigns to weaken teachers’ unions. Their playbook is familiar: Weaken public education and shift power to private interests with less transparency.

And it’s not happening in a vacuum. For years, Kansas has been a testing ground for national efforts to weaken public education, from slipping the repeal of teacher due process rights into a budget bill with no hearings, to pushing charters and vouchers while state tax cuts blow holes in the budget. When revenues drop, lawmakers face a false choice: Underfund schools or gut other public services. It’s a deliberate cycle — starve public schools, hold up the damage as “proof” they’re broken, then push a so-called solution that just happens to benefit the same people behind the cuts.

Yet our Kansas Constitution requires adequate school funding, and our Supreme Court has told lawmakers to meet that obligation (Sidenote: This is yet another reason we shouldn’t change how we appoint our Kansas Supreme Court justices). Every attack on students makes it harder for them to learn and for our teachers to educate. If you follow the money, you’ll see who benefits, and it’s not Kansas kids.

Meanwhile, our state attorney general is cheering from the sidelines. Whatever your view of him, Kansans should pay attention when any elected official gives cover to unelected D.C. groups targeting our schools.

If Title IX keeps getting twisted into a weapon, the first cuts won’t harm the children of politicians. It’ll swing at our kids who need school the most: special-ed students, children needing mental-health support, and those who count on after-school programs. It is wrong to take that away from our students. Even scripture warns us not to lead children astray.

Regardless of your beliefs or school district boundary, the part that should anger every Kansan is that this is big government overreach that contradicts our Kansas values. We elect Kansans to our school boards, Legislature and governor’s office to improve our schools. We don’t invite unelected D.C. think tanks to strip our school funding just because we believe every kid deserves a good education.

If that’s what “parental rights” means now, then parents should exercise the biggest right they have: Vote out anyone who thinks Kansas schools should be run by people who’ve never set foot in them.

Matt Kleinmann of Kansas City, Kansas, is a lifelong Kansan and former Jayhawk basketball player. He is a community developer, and he ran for U.S. House of Representatives in 2024.