(Updated to reflect Senate approval of education plan)
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won a key legislative victory Thursday when the Republican-controlled Legislature agreed on a school funding plan it hopes will meet the demands of a state Supreme Court order to adequately fund education.
The House voted 76-47 and the Senate voted 31-8 to pass a plan that puts about $90 million into schools in 2020 and 2021 each, with the money intended to cover the cost of inflation to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling from last year.
The plan, introduced by the governor at the start of the legislative session, also promises to put about $90 million into schools for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.
“The Kansas Legislature took an important step today towards addressing the needs of our students, supporting our teachers and fully funding our schools,” Kelly said in a statement.
“I’m proud this reasonable, commonsense plan was embraced with bipartisan support today. Kansans want their leaders to work together to move our state forward,” she said.
The Legislature wrapped up its work on education 11 days before legal briefs are due with the state Supreme Court. The bill now goes to the governor. Oral arguments are set for May 9.
“After years of litigation…the people want us to act responsibly to adequately and fairly fund quality schools for every child in our state regardless of their special needs, their family’s income or where they live,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said.
“The school children of Kansas cannot wait another day, another month or another school year to receive the suitable education they deserve,” Hensley said.
The Senate passed the bill just a couple hours after the House signed off on the legislation.
The House debate was marked by House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr.’s extraordinary address to the chamber explaining his opposition to the education funding bill.
“Let me be clear, I love our schools as much as anyone in this room does,” Ryckman told a hushed House chamber.
“I am as committed as each of you are to ensuring that every kid in this state has every opportunity to succeed. This vote is not about who loves schools and who does not,” he said.
“This is about whether we want to make promises to our kids that we can keep,” Ryckman said.
Ryckman – and other critics of the governor’s school finance plan – say it is not sustainable in the long term.
He predicted that the state will ultimately be forced to raise taxes, hold onto money that might otherwise go to highways, not lower the sales tax on food and forego retirement system payments to pay for the education plan.
“This is not the kind of promise I can make,” he said. “Make no mistake, the plan in front of us today will not give our schools the certainty they deserve. This is a promise we cannot keep.”
The bill drew support from a mix of Democrats and moderate Republicans in both chambers. In the House, a number of Republicans who were part of leadership and served as committee chairs voted for the governor’s plan.
Committee chairs supporting the plan included Reps. Troy Waymaster, Don Hineman, Susan Concannon, Russ Jennings and Richard Proehl and Jim Kelly.
Opponents of the education plan in the Senate shared some of the criticism levied against the plan in the House.
Republican Sen. Ty Masterson said he thought the governor’s plan was financially fragile in the long term, but added there are many accounting maneuvers that can be used to dodge a financial crisis at least in the short term.
“You’re not going to need anything here in the next few years because there’s lot of ways to move money around,” Masterson said.
Echoing Ryckman from earlier in the day, Masterson warned that just one event such as a recession could cause the state to renege on its education funding commitments.
“We are setting our people up,” Masterson said. “We are setting them on a rickety stool that’s too high to stand on.”
Masterson added, “I hope (the litigation) does end. Even if it does end, the next little hiccup in the economy, we’re right back where we started. Bodies churn and we do not learn.”
The bill passed by the Legislature includes some educational policies advocated by the House that are intended to hold schools accountable for educational performance. They include:
- A requirement for the Department of Education to create one-page performance accountability reports for the state, each school district, and each school building.
- A requirement for the Education Department to prepare annual longitudinal reports on student achievement on the state assessment for English language arts, math and science.
- A revision to a program that offers tax credits to entice businesses to donate money for scholarships that send the least affluent students to private schools. It now would make the scholarships available to the 100 lowest performing elementary schools, not just the lowest performing schools in general.
- A requirement for the Board of Education to provide the ACT college entrance exam and the three ACT WorkKeys assessments to each student enrolled in grades 11 and 12 at no charge. It would provide one pre-ACT exam for each student in the ninth grade as well.
- A three-year extension of the dyslexia task force.
- A requirement for school districts to publish budget documents and a funding report on the homepage of their website under a prominently displayed link titled “Accountability Reports.”
A couple provisions that did not get into the bill included:
- Requiring school districts to provide transportation to students living less than 2.5 miles from their school if there is no safe pedestrian route and there is no additional cost.
- Requiring the state Education Department to establish and maintain a statewide bullying-prevention hotline. The department also would have been required to identify the school district and school building where the bullying victim attends class, the name of the bullying victim, the alleged offender, as well as witnesses to the incident.
The bill also ultimately did not touch a law that provides for special education state aid at a rate of 92 percent of the excess costs of educating special needs children.
The school districts that challenged funding in court have signaled that the money earmarked in the plan is not sufficient to meet the court’s order.
