Contact your representative tonight and urge them to oppose House Substitute for SB 387 which is on General Orders for the House 3/26! This bill is a deeply flawed Frankenstein bill holding the education budget hostage in a package with bad policy that would not pass on its own. Tell your representative:

*They should demand a clean education funding bill which funds both general and special education without holding these very important items hostage by tying them to flawed policy.

*They should oppose this bill because it wrongly counts local LOB funding, raised with local tax dollars as STATE SPED funding in a sleight of hand designed to make it look like the state is funding closer to the 92% of excess costs it’s supposed to provide. LOB funding is local funding and the state can’t take credit for it.

**Forcing districts to count LOB funding as state funding and forcing them to use LOB funds for SPED violates local control, could lead to higher property taxes in districts not at their LOB cap and leaves districts at their LOB cap unable to spend that money as they see fit.

*They should oppose this bill because it contains multiple other bills we testified against separately. They were only briefly worked over two committee meetings, during which time completely unpublicized and unvetted amendments were passed. These bills should have separately gone to the floor so they could be explained and debated instead of being crammed into the funding bill at the end of the session. The Supplemental Note for this bill is a whopping 53 pages. This is a completely irresponsible way to create legislation.

*They should oppose this bill because not only is it a Frankenstein bill, but it’s a Frankenstein bill in a gut and go. The Senate has not heard this bill and will not be able to amend it.

*They should oppose this bill because it punishes districts not meeting their goals for at risk students by cutting their at risk funding. Punishing districts with lack of funding would hurt the very students this bill is supposed to help.

**This bill also attempts to track longitudinal data but fails to account for students moving in and out of the at-risk cohort which will limit the accuracy and applicability of the data.

*They should oppose this bill because it abolishes the SPED task force, which was highly promoted by the legislature until it ended up with a majority of reasonable experts instead of partisan political appointees. That body is much more capable of addressing the issues with the SPED formula than the political task force this bill creates to handle both regular and SPED funding.

*They should oppose this bill because while it improves the legislative acquisition of school buildings, it still doesn’t require the legislature to pay fair market value for buildings they may opt to purchase.

*They should oppose this bill because this list is incomplete, but is already too long. These matters are serious and demand the full attention of the legislature so that unintended consequences are understood and avoided. This abuse of process has been allowed multiple times over the past few years and is unacceptable.

Originally published on Facebook on March 25, 2024.