“So what happens when your costs go up? Well, then you have the freedom to cut spending wherever you want. Maybe you can quit busing kids to school, or cut staffing for your ESL students.
“Isn’t freedom a wonderful thing?
“What legislators are calling budget freedom is, in reality, forcing school districts to stretch the same dollars even further as costs continue to climb.
“But the delusion runs even deeper.
“While lambasting Kansas newspapers and educators for their ‘bombastic talk’ about inadequate funding, the governor’s deputy communications director Melika Willoughby sent out a news release identifying the improvements being made in school districts around the state…
“These are a demonstration that local taxpayers are willing to invest in their communities and in the future of their children. It’s not some miracle of block grant funding that made it possible for Shawnee Mission to begin construction of six new school buildings.
“Construction projects, and in most instances the implementation of iPad programs, are funded by local tax dollars through bond issues and a capital outlay levy. When Scott County taxpayers issued about $18 million in bonds for new construction and renovation of its high school, it was the result of a commitment made at the local level to invest in our community. That remains true regardless of what school funding formula the state chooses to adopt.
“Just as delusional is the state’s assertion that ‘extraordinary needs’ funding was able to offer a more immediate response to a funding crisis resulting from lost property valuations.
“That ignores the fact that if the state were funding education at levels ordered in the past by the courts and was continuing to fund education properly, school districts would be in a stronger position to weather an unexpected storm. Instead, cash-strapped schools find themselves in a precarious situation on a year-to-year basis.”
Read more here: http://www.scottcountyrecord.com/opinions/the-price-of-economic-freedom