Action Alert just issued for bad education bill up for a vote on Monday. Email your Senator—vote NO on SB 427
One of several bad bills requested by the Kansas Policy Institute that consistently works against our public schools.
Bill SB 427 is on the calendar for a vote on Monday. Emails are best by mid-morning, but final action likely won’t be taken until Tuesday morning.
Game On for Kansas Schools has issued an Action Alert
Game On for Kansas Schools, a well respected and established grassroots organization that advocates for public schools, has issued an action alert for bill SB 427. This bill singles out school board meetings (as opposed to city council or other elected board meetings) and attempts to legislate how meetings should be run.
This is one of several bills this session introduced at the request of the Kansas Policy Institute (KPI). KPI is a Koch funded organization that consistently works in Topeka to undermine our public schools. A number of KPI’s other bills have been rolled into the House K-12 budget bill, which we will be discussing soon.
The main proponent testimony for SB 427 came from:
Dave Trabert (KPI CEO and paid lobbyist)
KPI’s newly created school board resource organization, and
Extremist current and former school board members
I’m putting the Action Item up front, but you can read more about the bill below.
Email your Senator — Vote NO on SB 427
Use the link below to email your Senator asking them to Vote No on SB 427.
The email link has pre-populated wording. If you have time, please use your own wording. The excerpts from KASB & KSSA’s testimony below, could be helpful. Before hitting send:
Add your Senator’s email address
Add you Senator’s last name in the greeting
Sign your name and city
Find your state Senator at openstatates.org (indicated by UPPER chamber).
If the link doesn’t work for you, please use the copy & paste email template below.
About Bill SB 427
According to Game On, this bill seems to be in response to KPI supported—Moms for Liberty type—school board candidates losing control of school boards as they lost the majority of their races across Kansas in 2023. This bill attempts to undo the will of the voters to give extremist members on school boards extraordinary ability to dictate school board actions.
The bill also dictates email policies that could put some schools at risk of cybersecurity attacks and seeks to get boards to start funding KPI’s newly created school board resource organization.
The majority of school boards members in Kansas rely on support and resources from the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB). KASB is a reputable school board organization that consistently advocates for our public schools in Topeka.
You can read Game On’s full post about SB 427 here. The testimony from the Kansas Association of School Boards and the Kansas School Superintendents’ Association (KSSA) are also helpful in understanding the opposition to SB 427.
Excerpts from KASB & KSSA’s testimony
You can use some of the points below taken from KASB & KSSA testimony to craft your email. Please try to put the points in your own words.
To keep any type of decorum at local board meetings, giving any member the opportunity to add discussion items during new business is not healthy to running an organized meeting. Even the committee meetings here at the capital have a set decorum that is followed. Allowing interaction between the public and boards is also a local decision. Allow the board to use its knowledge of its own community to make decisions that will keep a meeting moving forward.
SB 427’s provisions violate local school boards’ constitutional rights to oversee their districts by imposing unnecessary and disruptive procedures and interfering with the efficient and effective governance of local public schools. The bill imposes meeting requirements on local boards of education that go beyond what is required of any other public bodies, including beyond what the members of the Legislature impose upon themselves.
The bill’s directives to both local boards and to KSDE override KASB members’ collective judgments as how best to protect their districts from cybersecurity attacks. For example, one of the simplest ways to hack into a school district’s tech system is to send a spoofing or phishing email to board members or employees. If one person takes the bait, the entire district is at risk of a cybersecurity attack. This is why many districts have a fillable form on their website for those who want to email a person with a district account.
We urge the committee to reject this bill’s attempt to impose a statutory one-size-fits-all directive on local boards on this important issue.
interferes with local control and impedes the efficient, transparent management of school district business by boards of education.
an unwarranted expansion of the power of a single board member over district business, this provision would make school board meetings less transparent rather than more transparent. Districts in Kansas post their board meeting agendas in advance, so that their communities know what is planned to be discussed at the upcoming board meeting.
procedure contemplated in this bill would allow a single board member to add items without notice and without support from a majority of the board and without providing any level of transparency to staff, students, families, the community, or the media about the issues to be discussed at a board’s meeting.
overrides a board president’s ability to keep order in a meeting, and subjects boards of education to meeting requirements that no other public body in the state would be similarly required to follow. We urge the committee to consider the optics of requiring school boards to follow directives the Legislature would not adopt for other public bodies or for itself.
Copy & Paste Email Template
TO: Your Senator
SUBJECT: Vote NO on SB 427
Dear Senator ______,
Please vote NO on SB 427. This bill supersedes local control and seeks to legislate how school boards run their meetings. The requirements established in this bill are not forced upon any other elected board and should not be forced on school boards. The bill expands the power of a single board member and reduces the transparency with the public by allowing new business not on the public agenda to be discussed.
The bill allows for chaos during board meetings and limits the board’s ability to hold organized, effective, efficient, and transparent meetings. In the recent school board elections, Kansans let it be known that they are tired of disruptive and dysfunctional school board meetings.
SB 427 is an unnecessary bill that creates a one-size-fits-all set of rules that serve to erode the decorum established by local school boards who understand their communities best. Please vote no on SB 427.