An astounding proposal by the Kansas House Appropriations Committee would reverse the state’s school finance philosophy and go back to dependence on the local property tax.
As USD 257 Superintendent of Schools Craig Neuenswander explained in Tuesday’s Register, district taxpayers would see a 25 percent increase in their property tax as the 257 levy leaped 12.98 mills to 61 mills and state funding fell by $273,562 if the bill became law.
All school districts in Kansas with low assessed valuations would see massive levy increases while high-dollar districts would not. The Shawnee Mission district levy, for example, would go up a mere 1.32 mills and the Blue Valley district levy only 1.2 mills. Our rich neighbor, Coffey County, would make out like a bandit with a tiny levy increase of .15 of a mill.
What the House committee wants to do, in other words, is clobber the poor and make the rich richer.
What in the world are they thinking? The answer to that question is clear: Any school finance decision that requires a state tax increase is off the table.
Exactly why a state tax increase is bad but a local tax hike is good was not explained — but that is no mystery either. The cowardly legislators who fathered this destructive bill want to dodge responsibility for dealing with the recession and hand it off to local district boards.
KANSAS MOVED from local to state funding of its public schools in 1992 to make it possible for low-evaluation districts to provide a high quality education; to give all Kansas students and taxpayers a measure of equality. The House bill produced by the Appropriations Committee would reverse those 18 years of progress.
The bill will surely fail in the House; would not stand a chance in the Senate; would most certainly be vetoed by the governor if it reached his desk.
That said, the fact that the powerful House committee wrote and passed the bill issued a warning to all Kansans: our Legislature is shot through with lawmakers who, consciously or otherwise, are working to impoverish the public schools and universities of our state. If they are successful, they will do enormous, permanent damage to this generation of students and, thereby, to the future of Kansas.
The men and women who voted to slash school funding — who, in other words, voted against a promising future for today’s and tomorrow’s student generations — should be defeated by the voters and replaced with candidates who understand that education is the most important function of state government and that good education requires adequate funding.
It’s back to basics time.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
