A dozen educators had Sen. Jeff King’s ear here late Monday afternoon in a question-and-answer session preceding the USD 257 board meeting.
King represents the 15th District in the Kansas Senate, which includes all of Allen County.
“Education is important to me,” said King, a Rhodes scholar and attorney in Independence. He is the son of two teachers and immediate relative of three others.
“My goal is not to take something you need,” he told the local educators. But, state aid prospects don’t look good.
“There are 250 differences between the House and Senate budget proposals, and others with the governor’s,” he said.
All, though, have a common theme: Substantial cuts to base per-pupil state aid. Dr. Craig Neuenswander, superintendent of schools, anticipates a funding cut next school year of $432,000 for USD 257, a portion of which will occur because of declining enrollment.
The local district has lost about $2.1 million in state aid since August 2008.
Relying on local property taxes won’t work to sustain funding to education, King said. That could lead to schools closing because of inequities between districts — the Johnson counties of Kansas have much more taxing latitude — and lower educational outcomes, he offered.
King also thinks there is inherent danger in the Supreme Court ordering the Legislature to ramp up funding for education on the basis of lawsuits, such as the 2005 Montoy case, in which the justices ruled school funding was not sufficient.
“That’s poor policy,” King said.
Consolidation may be forced by economic strangulation, King observed, noting that urban counties, which generate an inordinate share of property tax money that funds all schools, had a majority in the Legislature that would become more decided after reapportionment from the 2010 census.
He thinks the advantage of consolidation would be through cooperative class offerings, which would provide smaller districts with a more eclectic curriculum, and other sharing of resources.
Closing of schools, which occurred in the 1960s with the last round of consolidation, is more than a memory in many places, and not a good one, he said.
“We have communities that still haven’t healed from that and forced consolidation again would be 10 times worse,” King said.
Ideally, he said the state should provide enough money to give each student in Kansas a comprehensive education to enable them to compete in today’s global economy, but permit boards of education and district staffs to decide the conduct of local schools.
THE KANSAS PUBLIC Employees Retirement System (KPERS) naturally enough was mentioned by respondents.
King is vice chairman of the Senate’s KPERS Reform Committee. He said fixes were being floated for the retirement program, which has a $7.7 billion unfunded liability, and was “the second most important issue (to K-12 education, which consumes 52 percent of state spending) in the budget.”
The liability occurred from a $2.6 billion under-estimate made by an auditor in 1993 and underfunding for the next 14 years. Stock investments that under-performed also hurt the fund, along with accelerated participation in claiming benefits.
King said additional information about KPERS was due Friday.
