From our friends at Educate Lawrence: recently “the Kansas Senate considers cutting $2 million dollars to the Lawrence school district. Apparently unwilling to invest significant new money in our public schools, the Kansas Senate considers shuffling money within the overall education budget to meet the Kansas Supreme Court ruling on providing more equity between school districts. While Kansas has made the fourth-deepest cut in educational funding in the nation since the recession, the Kansas Senate now proposes to make further cuts in base per-pupil funding for virtual education, reducing funds to improve reading and math proficiency, reducing funds for...
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Rep. Rhoades continues to dispute Gannon equity funding figures
It looks like those of us who did not yet have children in school or weren’t yet paying attention during the Montoy litigation may get to see how you start with an order to fix school funding, and end up with multiple rounds of litigation ending with a very specific remedy order. “The Legislature faces a July 1 deadline to close funding disparities between school districts. The Department of Education and the nonpartisan Kansas Legislative Research Department have calculated that $129 million is needed to do that. . . Rhoades still disputed that a specific figure has been...
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Leave a Comment KASB’s Mark Tallman summarizes current Senate proposals for funding Gannon equity remedy
On the Senate side, there is no Gannon funding bill yet. Mark Tallman of KASB provides a helpful summary of the current proposals. We are dismayed to see the prevailing attitude that education funding must be cut to address Gannon equity. http://tallmankasb.blogspot.com/2014/03/impact-of-new-senate-republican-school.html...
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Leave a Comment Schools respond to plan to cut transportation budgets to fund Gannon equity
The current House Appropriations bill that seeks to provide the equity required by the Gannon decision proposes cutting $14 million in transportation aid. “[That proposal] is based on a 2006 Legislative Post Audit study that found school bus costs were overstated because of a flawed reimbursement formula. ‘The transportation formula systematically overestimates the cost of transporting students who live more than 2.5 miles from school,’ Legislative Post Audit wrote this week in a summary of that study. . . But Seaman USD 345 communications director Jeff Zehnder questioned the proposed cut, saying the transportation study was just one section...
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