DALLAS — Leaders of the Democratic minority in the Kansas Legislature proposed a plan Tuesday to draw on projected budget surpluses and increase state aid to local education.
The proposal eventually would boost state basic aid to $4,492 per student from the current $3,780.
The increase would be accomplished by increasing state education aid by $45 million in fiscal 2013 and another $45 million in 2014 from projected general fund surpluses. Funding in fiscal 2015 would reach $4,047 per student.
The districts would then receive half of each year’s surplus beginning in fiscal 2015 until the targeted per-student funding level is reached.
The estimated $351 million surplus expected at the end of fiscal 2012 is less than the 7.5% ending balance mandated by state law, but that requirement has been routinely waived in recent years by the Legislature.
The $4,492 level is what districts would have received in fiscal 2013 under a court-approved plan adopted by the Legislature in 2008 but quickly abandoned when state revenues declined steeply.
“Cuts to Kansas schools have gone way too far,” Davis said at a news conference in Topeka.
“As a result, parents are paying higher fees to support local programs and higher property taxes, all for a lower quality of education,” he said.
Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, has outlined a school financing plan that would simplify the school funding formula and give local districts more flexibility in setting property tax rates.
Brownback’s plan would raise per-student funding to $4,492 in fiscal 2013.
Republicans hold 92 of the 125 House seats and 32 of the 40 Senate seats.
Davis said the problem is not the formula, but the lack of money allocated to education. State funding has declined by $400 million over the past two years, he said.
“There is no reason to overhaul a school finance formula that has already withstood the muster of the Kansas Supreme Court,” Davis said. “Gov. Brownback and the Legislature simply need to hold up their end of the bargain and fund the formula properly.”
The Democratic proposal would also resurrect a revenue sharing plan that was created in 1938 but has not been funded since 2004.
Under the Democratic proposal, $90 million from an estimated $180 million surplus in fiscal 2015 would be transferred into the local ad-valorem tax reduction fund and distributed to local governments for property tax relief. The other $90 million would be earmarked for the school funding plan.
Sherriene Jones-Sontag, Brownback’s press secretary, said the Democratic proposal is distinctly different from the governor’s funding plan.
“The difference is we believe that local parents working with local administrators and local school boards is the best way to make spending decisions to meet the needs of local children,” she said. “Under the governor’s proposal, many of our struggling rural communities could choose to lower their mill levy rate and still maintain the same level of education funding from the previous year.”
