How to fund Kansas’s schools is turning into class warfare with the battle lines being drawn between legislators who represent wealthy school districts and those who do not.
Rep. Ray Merrick, speaker of the House, is against returning to the old school finance formula. With a goal of making schools across the state as balanced as possible, the formula hit hard at Blue Valley, the wealthy school district situated in Merrick’s territory.
Helping poorer schools off the back of Blue Valley, in Merrick’s opinion, is a “clear illustration of the unfairness of the old school finance formula,” as quoted in Sunday’s Kansas City Star.
Of the state’s 286 school districts, only 79 are considered well off. Schools and communities fortunate enough to be near a power plant such as Wolf Creek, for example, were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Increasingly, wealthy school districts are located in metropolitan areas such as Overland Park, Olathe and Shawnee Mission where there are large shopping districts and founts of entertainment that enrich a tax base.
It’s all about location.
In Blue Valley, for example, 1 mill of property tax raises $116 per pupil; while here in Iola, 1 mill raises $32 per pupil.
Property taxes on the Prairie View power plant in Linn County provide handsomely for its schools. One mill in property taxes there raises $177 per pupil. Just down the road in Pleasanton, 1 mill raises $37.
The question is should Prairie View be made to share the wealth?
Those sitting pretty, say no.
WHICH IS WHY the issue is before the Kansas Supreme Court and will be the other shoe to drop sometime this year. Because all things are not equal across this vast state it’s incumbent our education be tailored to provide the same opportunities to every Kansas child, no matter where they live.
First, though, is the high court’s ruling that our schools are underfunded by an estimated $73 million.
Several things contribute to the current state of affairs, including in no small measure Gov. Sam Brownback’s cutting $28.3 million from K-12 last year, a growing student base, inflation, and a frozen funding mechanism that cannot address any of these changes.
The governor and his legion maintain it’s not their job to raise taxes — but they’ve been more than happy to cut them, regardless of their damage.
