From an editorial in The Manhattan Mercury:

Instead of talk, how about money?

Sam Brownback’s education advice gets cheaper by the word. It lost a little more value Tuesday when he was offering the state’s school districts some tips on how to improve the education they deliver to their students.

The governor said schools ought to invest more money in classrooms, and they ought to do it at least in part by trimming administrative costs.
“I think we really have to look at our back-office operations a lot more — what it is costing us to run the things associated with a school and doing that a lot more efficiently and holding our administrative costs down so we can get that money into the classroom where everybody wants it,” he said.

Were that an original idea, Gov. Brownback would deserve some credit for it. But that’s already happening and has been for some time. He might know that if he weren’t so focused on trying to shortchange schools with the “block grant” formula whose unstated purpose is to get around judicial school funding mandates.

The Kansas Association of School Boards in May released a report showing that the number of teachers and other classroom personnel had increased by 16 percent in the last 17 years awhile the number of central office administrators and clerical staff had declined by that same percentage.
Mark Tallman, the KASB’s associate executive director for advocacy, said, “There is a lot of evidence to suggest the ways we are using our resources are highly effective, and I don’t think there is a lot to gain from shuffling money around.”

Unless, of course, you’re the Kansas Legislature. The governor and the Legislature have turned shuffling money around into an art form. That’s helped them fill holes millions of dollars deep in the state budget and avoid confronting many of the state’s long-term responsibilities. Such as meeting the Legislature’s constitutional duty to adequately fund public schools.

As for the state’s schools, which are welcoming students for the new year this week and next, they’re coping with the reality as shaped by Gov. Brownback and the Legislature with fewer teachers, fewer course options and larger class sizes. In the Manhattan-Ogden School District, which is better off than some and worse off than others, school board members, who’ve already cut $1 million and left 11 positions unfilled, find themselves looking for additional ways to trim spending while also raising taxes to boost revenue.

Neither they nor their peers across the state need patronizing advice from the governor. They need money.”