Democratic leaders of the Kansas House and Senate presented a proposal Tuesday that would use better-than-projected budget revenue to restore school funding cuts and offer property tax relief to home and business owners.
Their plan would use current school funding formulas to provide $45 million in additional state aid from an estimated $351 million in additional state general fund revenue this year for the state’s kindergarten through high school students. The plan would also pay $45 million next year. Funding levels after that would be set at 50 percent of each year’s projected surpluses, which aren’t yet known, until basic state aid reaches $4,492 per pupil. Kansas provides schools $3,780 per pupil in basic state aid now.
“Cuts to Kansas schools have gone way too far in the last seven years,” said Kansas House Minority Leader and state Rep. Paul Davis (D-Lawrence). Davis and Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley (D-Topeka) outlined the plan during a news conference Jan. 10 in Topeka’s Lowman Hills Elementary School gym.
“As a result, parents are paying higher fees to support local programs and higher property taxes all for a lower quality of education,” Davis said.
The plan conflicts in many ways with one that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, will present to the Kansas Legislature this session. Brownback’s plan also raises basic state aid to $4,492 per pupil, from $3,780 now which is to be funded largely with cost savings rather than the general fund ending balance. Brownback outlined those savings in budget proposals formally presented to the Legislature on Jan. 11-12.
Brownback’s plan scraps many of the complex calculations in the current formula that provide extra aid for schools with larger numbers of students than the current formula presumes cost more because they are eligible for free or low-cost lunches, come from bilingual families or must be transported longer distances. It gives local districts more authority to increase local property taxes if voters there want more money than basic state aid would provide.
Critics, including Davis, Hensley and other Democrats who endorsed the plan say scrapping the current system shortchanges schools with higher-cost students and locks many schools near the lower basic aid levels legislators have been voting for over the past seven years.