“Usually by this time of year school districts in Kansas know how much money they’re going to get for next year and they can spend the summer working on a detailed budget.
“This is not any year.
“The legislature is nowhere near passing a budget and last week a court held a hearing on a lawsuit that may toss out what lawmakers do anyway.
“At that hearing Deputy Education Commissioner Dale Dennis, perhaps the leading expert on school finance in Kansas, testified that all school districts will lose some funding under block grants.
“This leaves many Kansas districts in a lurch, including Louisburg, a district serving about 1,800 south on 69 Highway in Miami County.
“We spoke to Superintendent Brian Biermann, in his first year as a superintendent, about the uncertainty and how the new block grant funding is effecting his district.
“‘It’s been tight. We currently have a contingency fund, which in schools is like a savings account, of $153,466. That’s very low. It probably should be three or four times that high. If we had a couple of back-to-back things go wrong. Yes we have insurance but many districts, Louisburg as well, have raised the deductibles to keep the premiums from going up. We have to pay $50,000 out of pocket to even have an insurance claim. Well, $50,000 is one-third of my contingency if something bad happens. And our good folks who work for us, from teachers to support staff to administrators, going into next year they haven’t had a raise in four years. So there’s some troubling things that, yes, keep me up at night and making me lose my hair quicker than I want to.’ Louisburg Superintendent Brian Biermann.”
Read more here: http://kcur.org/post/many-kansas-schools-bemoan-block-grants