2011 politics and public school funding to clash

opinions

November 5, 2010 - 12:00 AM

Earlier this year the Kansas Legislature increased the state sales tax by a penny on a bipartisan vote to keep state funding for the public schools level and to help fund a new 10-year transportation department program.
Next year that tax hike could be repealed. The only bipartisan vote on the horizon is a resolution declaring Dec. 25 Christmas Day.
Tuesday’s roaring Republican landslide in Kansas boosted the party’s majority in the House to 92 of the 125 members, an increase of 16. There will be no need for any Republican to say more than good morning to a Democrat for the next two years. The count in the Senate remains 31-9 — because this wasn’t a Senate election year. And, as has been noted, Governor-elect Sam Brownback is very, very Republican.
Conclusion: Republicans will get the credit, or the blame, for whatever happens in Kansas until 2012.

THE MAIN ISSUE the new government of Kansas will face is the financing of the public schools and the state’s higher education system. It took a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to pass the sales tax increase this winter. A majority of the Republican members voted against it. The new Republican 76 percent majority has yet to be tested, but could be at least as tax-averse.
If the addditional money now flowing into the state treasury from a recovering state economy is not used to restore school funding to pre-recession levels, the state’s education system must shrink.
Much will depend on the budget proposals Gov. Brownback sends to the Legislature. He has called for a budget freeze. He has not said whether he will ask that no item in the budget be increased or if his goal will be reached if total state spending remains at current fiscal year levels.
If he demands that public school funding remain the same or shrink, the state’s school districts will be forced to choose between higher property taxes or the budget reductions that inflation and uncontrollable cost increases will require.
The considerations on funding the state’s universities, community colleges and vocational-technical schools are not so black-and white. All of the state’s higher education entities charge their students tuition. Tuition could be hiked to keep school budgets level.
Raising tuition to compensate for lower state appropriations hits poorer families hardest, but that consequence may be chosen over higher state spending in Topeka’s new political environment.
The six state universities all have other sources of revenue, including research grants and other federal monies. In at least some cases, state funding amounts to no more than 25 percent of their budgets. Money from Washington — if it continues to flow — may offset some of the planned state re-ductions.
Regardless of the governor’s budget and the legislative response to it, the level of public school financing is almost certain to be challenged in the courts. The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that the Kansas constitution requires an equal and adequate education for every Kansas child.
By any rational definition of equal and adequate, Kansas isn’t there.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

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