Dear Friend:
By now you have heard the spin, teachers got raises and Shawnee Mission class sizes are decreasing, so HB 2506 was a win-win, right? (Kansas City Star article: "New Kansas school finance law is mixed blessing for teachers")
Hardly. The short-term gains in teachers’ pocketbooks and class size reductions – to levels by no means optimal – come at the cost of long-term erosion of the public good.
I’ll admit, there are a number of things to like in the bill. I worked to ensure KU received the necessary bonding authority to build a new medical education building and I helped craft the K-12 local authority section of the original bill, which would have brought even more funds. However, the local authority provided in the final bill will only cover half the $7 million cost for salary increases, and doesn’t account for the cost to reduce parent paid-fees and lower class sizes. So where’s the other half?
Thank Superintendent Dr. Jim Hinson and his restructured team for their hard work and due diligence this past year. His operational changes redirect existing resources to leverage every dollar for efficiency and effectiveness – where it can be better directed to student success. This is what legislators argue for every day in Topeka.
We also need to acknowledge the role changing demographics in the SMSD attendance area play in bringing significant new dollars to the district simply because of the weightings in the school finance formula. In other words, SMSD will receive additional money simply because of the way the school finance formula works.
Blue Valley will cover the cost of their salary increases by using cash reserves to fill the gap between what the increases actually cost, and what the increased local authority will provide their district. You get the picture – yes, the increase in local authority in the bill is helpful, but we need to weigh the long-term damage done before calling it a victory.
I voted against the bill because it was the very definition of “what not to do” in government and public engagement. The actual text of the bill was NOT available to read at the time of the vote. It wasn’t available until more than a week after it had passed both chambers and was signed into law by the governor.
Washington-style political maneuverings shielded action and deliberation from public view. Votes were held on the weekend and in the middle of the night when most Kansans were asleep. (In 2013, I supported a House rule to require a midnight adjournment. The rule failed, but we all know nothing good happens after midnight.)
Worth repeating: the education bill was so rushed that an official written version was not available for more than a week after it had passed both chambers and been signed by the governor, allowing for serious flaws. Typically, flaws in legislation are found and corrected through extensive deliberation and study by legislators, policy experts, and legislative staff. In fact, the KS Department of Education and the Department of Revenue are at odds as to how to implement the new voucher program and the resulting giant corporate tax breaks included in it because the details just aren’t there.
While the Tea Party rails about transparency and ridicules Congress for not reading the 1000+ page Obamacare bill, the Kansas Legislature – currently controlled by the same type of extremists - did the exact same thing. Certain policy measures (teacher due process, changes in teacher certification, K-12 Study Commission) never had hearings in committee before legislators and the public.
The Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship bill was debated and killed on the House floor in 2013. It had a new hearing in the Education Committee during the 2014 session, but was never voted out of committee. Without support to move the bill through the legitimate process, this provision was stuffed into HB 2506 in the dark of night.
Corporations are set to receive a massive new tax credit at the expense of our children. No new law was needed for a corporation, or individual for that matter, to take a charitable deduction for contributing to a non-profit organization that grants scholarships. However, HB 2506 creates a 70% tax credit for corporations that make those donations to new entities called “scholarship granting organizations” whose only purpose is to give scholarships to students who leave a public school to attend a private school or homeschool.
HB 2506 is being touted as a significant increase in funding for our schools, yet it should be pointed out that most of the funding in this bill is in the form of property tax relief rather than dollars to the classroom. With only $14 per pupil in new money, the cuts of the past 5 years continue to shortchange our students.
So when the short-term gains begin to wear thin, many of us will already be at the drawing board working with you, in plain view, to fix what was done in the middle of the night behind closed doors.
Our legislatures DO represent the public – the 18% who actually vote in August primary elections. Please don’t sit this one out. Elections have consequences; the worst being responsible, intelligent people losing elections because responsible, intelligent people think their vote doesn’t matter.
