Today KASB’s Scott Rothschild tweeted from the Senate Ways and Means hearing on the A&M efficiency consultant’s education recommendations. We found the following tweets quite enlightening. Superintendents and school board members, if you would care to educate Senators Masterson, Melcher, Fitzgerald, Denning and Arpke on budget issues you face, parents of Kansas school children would be grateful. Kansas parents if you are constituents of these Senators, we would also like you to share your experiences and your awareness of the precariousness of the Kansas budget with them. Rothschild: Masterson, Melcher disagree with A&M statement that there were cuts...
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Uncertainty clouds recommendation to tap reserve funds
“’I don’t think any districts just want to sit on money. But we’ve been through a period of great uncertainty financially in this state going back to the Great Recession,’ Tallman said. “’School board members by and large tend to be fiscally conservative people. They really do,’ he added. ‘And I think their tendency is if we’re in kind of a risky environment, that natural tendency of let’s save to be prepared because we don’t know what’s going to happen.’” Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article60645616.html...
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Leave a Comment Legislature needs to meet obligation to fund schools
“The original House and Senate budgets committed all but about $6 million of the state’s expected general fund revenue, but state education officials estimate it would cost about $70 million this year and $39 million next year to comply with the court’s ruling. Where will that money come from? “Last year, legislators instituted a block-grant system that essentially keeps school funding flat for two years. During that time, they said they planned to write a new school finance formula. That was almost a year ago, but there appears to have been little progress on that task. Faced with...
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Leave a Comment Foster care bill containing voucher passes Senate
There’s a voucher provision built into Sen. Knox’s foster care bill. “The bill would place sole discretion with participating foster parents to determine the educational placement of foster children in their care. If the parent chose not to send a child to public school, the host parent would receive approximately $7,000 annually to cover the cost of private school, online courses or homeschooling. Families volunteering to be part of the CARE initiative wouldn’t receive other state payments for foster care services.” Read more here: http://cjonline.com/news/2016-02-15/kansas-senator-makes-case-experimental-foster-care-program-kansas and updated information here http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article61890032.html. From an article when Knox introduced the same concept last year....
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