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House school finance discussion next week to include policy issues eliminated from appropriations bill

“A key House member said Wednesday that school finance discussion next week will include charter school expansion and that leadership negotiations on the amount of new money the Legislature will allocate for schools continue. The House Appropriations Committee received a briefing on a bill meant to satisfy a Kansas Supreme Court school finance ruling but Rep. Marc Rhoades, the committee’s chairman, told members not to limit themselves to the parameters of that bill once an official hearing begins Monday. ‘Bring it,’ Rhoades said of members’ individual ideas. ‘Bring it next week, and we’ll have a discussion on it.’...
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New CBPP report notes Kansas still not restoring recession era education funding cuts

From a new report from the CBPP: “Unlike Most States, Kansas Is Still Cutting School Funding High-quality schools are a crucial building block of economic growth. They determine the quality of much of the state’s future workforce and shape the minds of future community leaders and entrepreneurs. Deep cuts in funding for schools undermine school quality in part because they limit and stymie the ability of states to implement reforms that have been shown to result in better outcomes for students, including recruiting better teachers, reducing class sizes, and extending student learning time. After the Great Recession deeply reduced...
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Lawrence perspective on Senate proposals for funding Gannon equity remedy

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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