Fiction: Governor says he’s
increased money to schools, teachers
It should be good news. BROWNBACK is frustrated with the media’s constant attacks on his grand plan for Kansas.
The state’s enrollment for K-12 students is up by 1 percent, totalling nearly 460,000 students, and follows a trend of annual increases as the state continues to grow.
Trouble is, less money is being made available for their education.
Funding for schools has dropped by 16.5 percent since 2005, when the State Supreme Court ruled legislators were failing the state’s constitution to provide a “suitable” education for its students.
In 2005, per pupil funding was $3,900. The court recommended it be raised to $4,492 per pupil and until the recession began in 2009, legislators were making incremental progress in meeting that goal. Today, about 10,000 more students are enrolled in public schools, yet per pupil funding has dropped to $3,838.
A recent editorial in the New York Times criticized Gov. Sam Brownback for his leadership on education.
The Times said the Governor’s five-year, $3.7 billion tax cut is at the expense of adequately funding schools.
Instead of taking the state’s meager rebound from the recession to replace cuts to state schools, legislators have allowed massive tax cuts for businesses and individuals.
Brownback refuted the NYT claim that under his administration funding for education has fallen another $500 million, resulting in teacher layoffs and larger class sizes.
“Since I was elected, state spending on K-12 education has increased by more than $200 million and teacher salaries have grown,” Brownback wrote in his own letter to the editor.
The governor’s claims are disingenuous.
To the best of our knowledge, and with the help of Duane Goossen, former state budget director, this is how the governor twisted the numbers to suit his rhetoric.
At the height of the recession in 2010, the federal government helped states like Kansas keep their schools open and teachers paid.
For that school year alone, Kansas received $300 million in federal aid and used $2.7 billion from its state general fund for education.
That put state funding for schools at $3 billion, down from the previous year’s allocation of $3.135 billion, but still up compared to current funding which is around $2.84 billion.
So the governor chose the state’s lowest point in recent history — the height of the recession — to say he has overseen an increase in state funding to schools, conveniently omitting the federal aid which kept funding at a more adequate level.
As for the governor’s claim of teachers seeing more pay; that’s wrong. Yes, the state has directed more money to the retirement program for state employees, but considering it’s $9 billion in debt, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for what truly needs to be done to make it solvent for future generations.
“Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to increase spending on education and cut taxes at the same time. We have done it three years in a row by focusing our resources on the core functions of state government, which includes education,” he wrote in his rebuttal to the NYT editorial.
No governor, you haven’t.
State schools are being forced to manage on fewer resources.
That’s a fact, no matter how you spin it.
— Susan Lynn
