PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Game On Hopes Walk is a Game Changer for State Legislature Local Mom Makes Second Walk from Merriam to Topeka, Others Join Merriam, Kan. – Last year the group Game On for Kansas Schools made headlines when member and local mom, Heather Ousley, made the 60 plus mile trek from her house in Merriam to the capitol building in Topeka. With the motto of “Just one walk,” the group aimed to air their frustrations with state legislators over the budgetary cuts to public schools in the state and the emergence of...
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Heather’s walking to Topeka March 28-31
Heather’s walking to Topeka March 28-31! Many of you first met us last March when Game On member Heather Ousley walked the 60 miles from Kansas City to Topeka to voice opposition to the policies and priorities of many in our legislature. This session we have seen continued underfunding of our schools. We have a court decision to fix unconstitutional inequities in our school funding which has been met by reluctance and a poisonous bill bundling funding with toxic education policy. Many legislators have shown us their relief over the Gannon remand of the adequacy issues, which they...
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Leave a Comment New House appropriations bill still not public, believed to contain toxic education policy and some changes to charter law
“Republican leaders in the Kansas House on Friday said they didn’t intend to include an expansion of charter schools as part of a school funding bill intended to address the Supreme Court’s ruling on school finance. And while they said they intend to introduce a new bill without the charter school provision, education groups said they still have major concerns about other provisions of the bill, such as merit-based pay for teachers, changes in teacher licensing requirements and offering corporate tax breaks for funding private school scholarships.” http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2014/mar/21/charter-school-provision-mistake-gop-leaders-admit/ We haven’t seen the new bill, but it sounds like there will...
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Leave a Comment Merrick now says appropriations bill was not supposed to include broad changes to charter law and new bill is being drafted
Now Speaker Merrick is saying the appropriations bill was not supposed to contain the charter provisions, and a new appropriations bill is being drafted. See http://www.kansas.com/2014/03/21/3358868/house-speaker-wont-allow-charter.html But that seems inconsistent with what he said in this morning’s edition of the Wichita Eagle: “’If we’re going to spend that money, we’ve got to get some policy stuff. To me, that’s only logical,’ said House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, shortly after the bill was introduced. . . . Merrick called the 91-page bill a ‘work in progress and a starting point’ and said he expected additions to be made and some...
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