Republicans who want to strip public schools of funding, impoverish teachers and stunt learning opportunities for the littlest Kansans have accused educators of “fearmongering.”
Unfortunately, the fearmongers have a point.
Legislators in Topeka underfunded schools for years. The state Supreme Court not only ordered them to change course but kept jurisdiction over the case for five years to ensure compliance. That binding ruling came down in 2019, only to be interrupted by a global pandemic. Now our Legislature plans to rewrite the school funding formula, this time without court oversight. Given lawmakers’ past actions and current rhetoric, educators’ concerns sound well founded.
This session alone, lawmakers reneged on a pledge to significantly boost special education funding. They had made the pledge just last year, but budget-busting tax cuts proved too alluring.
They advocated a mammoth school voucher bill, one that would funnel state money to wealthy families (the proposal didn’t make it through this year).
And just coincidentally, they sent a constitutional amendment to voters that would change the process for selecting state Supreme Court judges — possibly leading to an anti-education high court.
These legislative actions, taken as a whole, suggest that lawmakers want nothing more than to spend less on public schools, shift resources to private religious institutions and face the absolute minimum of scrutiny while doing so. Of course no one will admit to this, but one only has to watch what’s happening and connect the dots.
That’s all before we come to formula rewrites.
While the words sound wonky, the outcome couldn’t be more important. Officials are deciding how to fund the state’s schools for years to come. If they don’t get this right, or if they seek to pull back from prior commitments, a whole generation of Kansas kids could suffer.
A task force held hearings on the subject May 7 and May 8, and Kansas Reflector senior reporter Tim Carpenter covered day one and day two.
Just listen to the voices of those who will be deciding the future of public education.
The task force chairwoman, Sen. Renee Erickson, a Wichita Republican: “There has been a poisoning of the well against this process already, and superintendents are worried. It doesn’t benefit anyone to poison the well and already start gearing up for an expensive lawsuit without having anything to sue over yet. That mentality is not helpful to anyone in this process.”
Rep. Scott Hill, an Abilene Republican: “I find it bordering on immoral that people would understand, which we all do, that we’ve been teaching kids wrong for a long time. And, to not change that teaching direction on their own without supplemental money is abhorrent.”
Erickson again: “By no means am I going to allow the Legislature to be the convenient villain in this reading scenario. It just defies logic.”
Erickson once more: “We overpay our ineffective teachers way too much. The longer they’re embedded in the system, the harder it is to get rid of the teachers who are not doing right by our kiddos. The sad truth of the matter is those are the teachers that are the highest paid because they’ve been there the longest.”
This should put anyone who cares about public education on high alert, if they aren’t already.
