(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Dec. 26, 2016)
Christmas is over, and 286 Kansas Unified School Districts are still waiting for their present…a fatter school finance formula that will bring them more money for the upcoming school years.
Pardon the double-negative, but nobody who runs or works for school districts doesn’t want more money.
And, while there is still the budget hole to fill, the biggest issue for the upcoming session is going to be responding to the Kansas Supreme Court which will in weeks or months determine whether the Legislature is appropriating enough money to schools so that every child–border to border, city, rural, whatever–is provided the same opportunity for getting a good K-12 education.
The state is now operating under a block grant system which provided districts about what they’ve received the past couple years, and if that seemingly static distribution of funds doesn’t inspire school superintendents, teachers and other employees to start looking at new cars, or maybe higher thread-count sheets, it is at least equitable. That means the simple block grant formula doesn’t favor or short-change any districts.
But equity is a whole different thing than adequacy. That’s the real big-number issue, which some are predicting could cost the state $500 million or may become a meal that, with tip, could cost the state, or someone, $1 billion.
And, that’s the Christmas present that school districts are hoping for. That somehow the state scraps the block grant program and figures out a formula that will boost aid to K-12 districts.
Oh, and there’s that other aspect of spending more money on K-12. It’s where that additional money comes from. The state can write the check, or the state could split the bill with school districts, requiring higher property taxes to support schools. The locally elected school board members would prefer, of course, that the state pay the bill and that their neighbors and constituents not be inconvenienced with a property tax increase.
Getting an idea of just how that double-negative sentence works out? Nobody at the local school level doesn’t want more money, but they are a more than a dab interested in where it comes from.
Because the whole issue of adequacy of aid to education is pegged to students having equal opportunities, some will say that the state or someone must decide what sort of education we want for the kids. Basics, which will get them into a college or community college or a vocational school or maybe just into a job. Or it might be specialized classes that deal with making sure a student has the social and collegial skills to live a good life that isn’t based on living in their parents’ basements.
And, if some districts want to offer scores of classes that influential parents want for their kids, must all districts offer those classes, or at least have the money to offer them if any patrons asked?
Defining just what a suitable education is will be the issue that may determine whether the Legislature will adopt whatever the court comes up with or whether it might hand that decision to the 10-member State Board of Education to hammer out.
The real key here is that whatever the court decides and whatever the Legislature decides isn’t going to end two decades of court fights over providing equal access to an adequate education. Just isn’t going to happen.
As big an issue as the state’s cash flow problem is, the hundreds of millions of dollars of shortfall that needs to be repaired, it comes down to elementary school arithmetic. Revenue minus spending equals the ending balance for each year.
Adequacy? Equal opportunity? Those are bigger questions that simple math won’t solve. It comes down to how smart you want those Kansas kids to be, and whether they learn enough at K-12 to live out their lives as we’d like them to.