Despite the fact that 0 districts and 0 education advocates voiced support of the bad education policy bill (House Substitute for SB 16), it gained favorable approval 63-60 after 11:30 pm last night. It takes 63 votes to pass a bill in the House, so please contact your legislator and urge him or her to oppose this bill. The final vote will occur sometime after 11 am today.
The House will also debate the funding bill (Substitute for HB 2395) sometime after 11 am today. We oppose this bill as well. All that appears to be standing between us and a constitutionally adequate school finance plan is the inflation adjustment that has already passed the Senate. This can be accomplished without a tax increase and is already in the governor’s budget. It is important because the legislature is taking 5 years to phase in the funding which they passed last year and which the Kansas Supreme Court has already approved. The inflation adjustment simply attains that figure by refilling the hole that would be created by inflation during those years. HB 2395 removes the funding increases in years 4 and 5 which the legislature approved last year, and which was part of the basis of the court’s approval of the state’s school finance plan in the Gannon case. It also removes the CPI adjustment after the promised funding is phased-in. This will help ensure the continuation of school finance litigation as it leaves schools without a means for addressing increasing costs. HB 2395 also ignores that the legislature is supposed to be funding inflation. It takes a portion of the funding and allocates it to specific programs which then leaves districts unable to use that funding as they need to keep up with inflation and removes local control.
The policy provisions and diversion of part of the inflation adjustment to particular programs are inappropriate at this stage of the game. The legislature drafted the formula last year, and it has been approved by the Kansas Supreme Court. Every time the legislature tweaks the formula, it ends up having to go through judicial review. More often than not, it fails that judicial review because equity or adequacy is negatively impacted, and we have to wait for the legislature to go back and fix it and then have the court rule on it again. We want this process to end, and we want it to end this year so that our children get the resources they need and our schools have budget certainty. With respect to the behavioral health weighting that gets part of the inflation adjustment funding in the current bill, that funding then isn’t able to be used by districts to pay for the programs they already have. It forces them to incur a new expense, meaning that the inflation hole still exists.
Some legislators are using a bogus argument that they can’t bind future legislatures, but the reality is that most legislation they pass doesn’t have a sunset. Future legislatures are able to pass new laws and go different directions, but that doesn’t limit what current legislatures pass. Furthermore, the Kansas Supreme Court is going to retain jurisdiction, so future legislatures are going to be bound by the Gannon solution anyway.
It is also critically important to acknowledge that this isn’t just about money. It is about meeting the demonstrated needs of Kansas students and investing in our state’s most important natural resource and biggest driver of economic development-our children.
Legislators are feeling the heat from leadership. Their chair and vice chair committee positions are being threatened. They need to feel the heat from you. They need to know you are watching and will hold them accountable. Please contact them and tell your friends and neighbors.
If you don’t know who your Representative is, you can look it up here:www.ksleglookup.org.
Originally posted to Facebook on 03/26/2019.