What can you do? Educate yourself on candidates, plan to vote in the August primaries and bring along your friends. Both the Republican and Democratic parties now have closed primaries. If you are registered as a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian and you want to change your party affiliation to vote in the primary, you must do so by July 1 because of legislation passed during the session. If you are unaffiliated, you can still walk into the polls on voting day (or fill out an advance ballot) and affiliate with a party at that time. Primary elections are...
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School officials discuss lack of increase in funding from school finance bill
When you see postcards touting the high priority the legislature has given education as elections near, remember this story, which compiles the impact of the school finance bill on several different districts. “We are running low in our contingency reserve and will have to cut two positions in our career and tech ed programs at Bluestem high school for 2014-15. I have been working in Kansas schools for over 30 years and can definitively say that the legislative support of schools and students in our state is at the lowest point I have seen it in that time....
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Leave a Comment Contact federal legislators regarding favoring charter schools
We do not oppose charter schools when they act as they are supposed to-as partners to the public schools in their communities and as innovation laboratories, but we are troubled by increasing support for charters in an era when our true public schools are being told there isn’t money to fund all of their needs. We agree with this statement by NSBA and recommend contacting your FEDERAL LEGISLATORS. http://schoolboardnews.nsba.org/2014/05/nsba-disapprove-congress-attempt-to-expand-charter-schools/...
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Leave a Comment Editorial writer angry about lack of responsible representation in Kansas legislature; we are too
“This is not what is going on in Topeka any longer. Instead we have legislators who believe that fiscal prudence means only one thing: cutting taxes no matter what the effect on institutions of government and on the public. Our legislators no longer seem to care about facts. Important legislation, like the school finance bill, included radical changes to teacher job security without any serious attempt at fact-gathering or public hearings. Our court system’s funding structures were radically altered, again without fact-gathering or adequate hearings and, very possibly, in contravention of the Kansas Constitution. And, of course, a...
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