TOPEKA — Senate President Ty Masterson and Rep. Kristey Williams delivered a series of inaccurate statements on gun violence, public school cuts and special education funding during an hourlong public forum Saturday in Augusta.
The forum took place a day after the Senate rejected legislation crafted by Williams to create a private school voucher program. Lawmakers adjourned for spring break in the early morning hours of April 7.
Williams, an Augusta Republican, and Masterson, an Andover Republican, complained about public school performance and made their case for using taxpayer funds to incentivize attendance at unregulated private schools.
In an interview, Liz Meitl, a public school teacher in Kansas City, Kansas, said Masterson and Williams were misrepresenting K-12 pubic education information.
“What they’re doing is creating circumstances in which the Kansas public can’t have conversations about real change or real improvement,” Meitl said. “They’re gaslighting us as a whole state.”
School funding cuts
Masterson falsely claimed there was no funding cut to public schools under former Gov. Sam Brownback, even though the state repeatedly slashed public school funding between 2008 and 2016, years when Masterson was in the Legislature.
“That’s the biggest lie out there in the ether, is that there was this big cut in schools,” Masterson said. “The only governor that actually hard cut schools — which was less-money-in-subsequent-years, I-got-less-than-I-did-before cut definition — the only governor that cut schools was Mark Parkinson.”
Parkinson, a Democrat, executed several rounds of school budget cuts in response to the 2008 recession, leading schools to file a lawsuit in 2010, the year Brownback was elected. The Legislature again lowered the amount of money the state provides public schools after Brownback took office in 2011.
As the state lost a series of legal challenges for underfunding schools, the Legislature replaced a formula that dated to 1992 with a two-year block grant to school districts. The Kansas Supreme Court determined the grants, which lowered K-12 school funding and eliminated extra aid for students in poverty, were unconstitutional.
Legislators and lobbyists who propose spending less on public schools sometimes conflate the distinction between state aid, which pays for teacher salaries and classroom expenses, with local bond projects and federal aid for food and transportation.
“K-12 never got less money. And that’s just math,” Masterson said.
Senate and House lawmakers reached a deal last week to cut $76.3 million in base state aid from public school funding, but neither chamber voted on the proposal before adjourning.
The funding bill was criticized because of the cuts, and also because it was a massive piece of legislation that blended state funding for K-12 education with provisions from nine other bills, including a form of parental rights legislation and an extension of the statewide mill levy that generates revenue for public schools.
Special education funding
