Kansas Senate votes down K-12 public schools budget

The Kansas Senate blocked a budget for K-12 schools on Thursday after intense opposition from public education groups.

The Kansas Senate voted 12 to 26 to reject a proposed budget that fully funded schools, and provided $77.5 million in new funding for special education but altered the way the state calculates special education spending. The House had narrowly approved the bill earlier in the day.

Key public education advocates, including the Kansas Association of School Boards and the Kansas National Educators Association, the state’s largest teachers union, had opposed the measure, arguing it amounted to an accounting trick that denied schools the funding for disabled students they desperately need.

“This bill does not include a long-range plan to fully fund special education. Instead, it offers a one-time $77 million increase, along with a series of accounting gimmicks to falsely promise that Special Education will be fully funded in the future,” the groups said in a statement

Wednesday.

The bill’s failure likely means the Legislature will start a weeks-long break on Friday without passing funding for public schools.

In recent years public education advocates have loudly called for a massive increase in special education funding. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly proposed such an influx – a $375 million increase over the next five years in $75 million installments.

Instead, the bill Republicans crafted allocated $77.5 million in new funds while counting local discretionary dollars as a portion of the state’s special education spending – an accounting maneuver that may bring Kansas into compliance with spending requirements without significant funding increases.

Several Republicans joined Democrats in rejecting the bill, arguing it harms their local school districts that depend on that funding and would create an excuse for the Legislature to underfund special education in the future.

Rep. Bill Cliffford, a Garden City Republican, opposed the bill and referred to the alterations in the special education formula as “a shell game.”

“Certainly my school districts would be negatively impacted at some point,” he said.

Senate Democrats spoke against the bill, arguing it was understudied and could harm districts across the state. “That is something we all need to be concerned about,” Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat, said.

Republican proponents had argued those funds were meant for special education students and should be spent in that manner.

“For the last seven years the LOB money that has been generated off of the excess costs of special education students has gone not into the special education fund where it should rightly go but it has gone into the general fund or the athletic fund or the increase the salary for the superintendent fund,”

Rep. Scott Hill, an Abilene Republican said.

“Increasing our responsibility for special ed and at the same time cleaning up what local districts do with special ed money makes sense.”

Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican, argued Kelly’s plan would depart from normal funding practices.

The Legislature, she said, cannot hold future Legislatures to a commitment on funding. New dollars for special education, she said, will always come.

“I want to make sure that special education is funded today and this gives them $77.5 million more than they had,” she said.