Late Thursday night, the Senate passed its education funding bill with many troubling provisions. It includes a property tax credit of up to $2500 for families homeschooling their children or sending them to private schools, the ALEC corporate tax credit scholarship, elimination of teacher due process and cuts to transportation, at-risk and virtual education funding, among other things. It includes the ability to raise LOBs but results in a net loss of school district general funds of $24.9 million. We oppose further diversion of general funds for education tax credits. We can support those after we fully fund our public schools. We oppose elimination of due process for teachers. We note that they aren’t tweaking due process-they’re eliminating it. We note that teachers are informed advocates for our children and believe this would have a chilling effect on teachers’ ability to participate in the political process. We oppose funding education by cutting education. As Sen. Hensley stated, this isn’t just robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s robbing Peter to pay Peter.
The House Appropriations Committee moved toward center. We’ll have more on that soon.
Mark Tallman of KASB has a helpful comparison chart here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i1T5D6Jo8GbzIBVgaCy4M2QNpmEciHbCNuGbgPTIGYk/pub