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Who Pays for What the State Stops Funding?

We don’t think people fully understand how much the Special Education shortfall is currently hurting our schools and the children they serve and how much worse it would get under a Ty Masterson governorship. From Moderate Kansas “An inconvenient truth: decisions made in Topeka can drive up your property taxes, even when local officials get the blame. Special education is a clear example. Federal law requires public schools to provide special education to eligible children with disabilities. Those services are not optional. A local school board cannot drop them because the Legislature falls short. Kansas law sets the...
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District’s Obligation to Fund Special Education Grows from 0% to Almost 35%

It’s Fact Check Friday! The Special Education funding shortfall is a serious problem our legislature has been unwilling to address. About $1,000 of every student’s Base State Aid is now going to fill that shortfall. What would your district do with an additional $1,000 per student? From Kansas Association of School Boards “FACT CHECK FRIDAY Special Education Funding Is at Its Lowest Level in State History. Kansas once funded 100% of excess special education costs. For FY 2026, the state is funding 65.3%, leaving local school districts responsible for more than $440 million in annual backfill spending. That...
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Regulations for the new federal voucher program dropped today, and as we expected, they confirm our suspicions in several respects. The Kansas legislature should have waited for the regulations (as multiple states have done) so they could have had a more accurate discussion about what the program would and wouldn’t do. We agree with this assessment from KASB Originally published on facebook October 2, 2026...
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