Although efforts to rework the school funding formula have failed in the past, we suspect they will be “successful” this year. Why? There simply isn’t enough revenue coming into the state, but legislators know Kansans won’t be happy about cuts to education so they won’t “cut” funding, they’ll just “rework the formula” which will just happen to result in less funding for our schools. We can see the 2016 and 2018 campaign postcards already.

“That claim has been the source of considerable dispute, both in the Statehouse and among the general public. Overall, total state funding for K-12 education did increase during his first term, from $2.97 billion when he came into office in 2011 to $3.18 billion this year.

“But that was largely the result of increased state funding for the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, which includes school employee pensions, and the Kansas Supreme Court ruling in March ordering the state to increase particular kinds of funding that targets lower-wealth districts.

“On the other hand, ‘base’ funding for schools — the money distributed on a per-pupil basis that pays for general, day-to-day operating expenses for schools — has gone down by about $21 million over that same period, due mainly to a cut in the base-aid formula that resulted when Congress phased out federal stimulus money it had been sending to states during the Great Recession.

“Early in his first term, Brownback proposed a sweeping overhaul of the formula used to calculate base state aid. And while that plan never got out of a legislative committee, Brownback says he wants to take another swing at it in the coming session…

“But the governor offered few details about what kinds of changes he thinks should be made.

“‘To me, we ought to just open the whole thing up,’ he said. ‘It’s just that the formula has grown very complex, convoluted (and) questionable. … As I said a couple of years ago, I think you ought to open it up, redo it and sunset it in four years so you’re having a regular discussion about where half of your state general fund goes.’

“Republican legislative leaders have also called for rewriting the formula.”

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2014/dec/28/school-funding-water-plans-brownbacks-agenda-2015/