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MO sues closed KC charter for $3.7 million

In honor of School Choice Week. In Kansas, we have school choice. We don’t need expansion to multiple charter authorizers that encourages the creation of charter schools that take public tax dollars without adequate protections. Here’s an example from our next door neighbor of what happens all too frequently. “Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement released Monday that Hope Academy ‘failed to live up to its promises in educating the children in its school.’ The suit his office filed Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court calls for the school and two former employees to account for...
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Bradford files massive expansion of ALEC tax credit scholarship program

Rep. Bradford has filed a bill to expand the tax credit scholarship program. Among other things, the bill takes away the requirement that students qualify as “at-risk” or attending a Title I focus or priority school, takes away the requirement that students have attended public school the prior year, expands the tax credit from 70% of the corporation’s income tax liability to 100% of ANY TAXPAYER’S income tax liability, and raises the cap of the program from $10 million to $12.5 million. We oppose this expansion for all the same reasons we opposed the original bill and last...
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General fund income could be less than expenses for 4th year

Kansans need to remember this reality is part of the context of legislator decisions about school funding. “Next year’s state budget could be the fourth fiscal year in a row with less general fund income than expenses, former state budget director Duane Goossen noted. ‘Each year lawmakers have scrambled to fill the resulting gap, first by blowing through $709 million in reserves, and then by withdrawing record amounts from the highway fund and other funds,’ Goossen wrote in a blog post for the Kansas Center for Economic Growth. Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed budget for next fiscal year has...
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