Education — a BIG WIN, a big loss, and some in between. That's politics in the state of Kansas with the makeup of this current legislature.
First things first
We made it to the end! The House and Senate adjourned on Friday night bringing the 2023 legislative session to a close.
Thank you so much for hanging in there over these last four months as we fought the good fight for public education and other important issues. I hope you will see that although things didn’t go the way we hoped for everything, your engagement in the process made a huge difference!
BIG WIN! Goodbye Education Savings Account vouchers
We did it! Seriously, this was 100% because legislators realized their constituents were actually paying attention. State legislators aren’t used to that level of engagement.
Watching my home state of Iowa pass a big Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher program into law in January and then seeing the same bill introduced in Kansas was defeating.
But, Kansans stepped up! It started with over 240 private citizens submitting written testimony during the committee process in January to voice their opposition to ESAs. Unprecedented!
And then time after time as GOP leadership modified the ESA program, changed bill numbers, or added incentives to try to gain votes, Kansans continued to express their opposition in emails to their legislators.
And Kansans informed and encouraged their friends to do the same. Six Degrees of Activism was by no means the only grassroots effort out there, but we gained over 260 subscribers since the end of January. Thank you for bringing more people to the work of advocating for public education and other important issues.
Our work saw the Sub for SB 83 version of ESAs go down in defeat on April 7, only to be resurrected in HB 2089 three days ago. Passing ESAs has been a priority of the K-12 Education Budget Chair (Kristey Williams R-Augusta) for the past three years. Leadership was not going to give up.
But, Kansans weren’t done either. Friday night, it became clear to leadership that legislators heard the voices of their constituents loud and clear. They did not have the votes to pass ESAs. Unceremoniously, HB 2089 went down in defeat when they didn't even bother to bring it to the floor for a vote. That’s a huge win!
This really is something to celebrate…we can do big things when we come together and engage in the process! Remember this for 2024, because they will try again.
Unfortunately, the celebration is tempered by…
Big loss — Fully funding Special Education
Sadly, with that big win came a big loss. The two biggest education initiatives of this legislative session were to defeat the Education Savings Account voucher program and to fully fund special education (SPED).
SPED hasn’t been fully funded since 2012 and it is currently underfunded by $160 million. That shortfall is eroding the general education funds that were restored, after over a decade of budget cuts, with the Gannon Supreme Court case.
When GOP leadership saw support for their prized ESA voucher program waning, they decided to bundle the vouchers with a $72 million SPED increase (the dollar amount of the first year of a five year phase-in to fully fund SPED proposed by the Governor), hoping that would garner the votes they finally needed.
They were wrong, and their decision to use SPED as a bargaining chip will continue to harm Kanas kids as the projected shortfalls for fiscal years 2024 and 2025 are $183 and $241 million1, respectively.
And let’s be clear, they didn’t just use SPED funding as a bargaining chip, they used Kansas kids as a bargaining chip. Districts will have to continue taking funds from their general operating budgets to cover the SPED shortfall, reducing the resources available for supporting the education of all students.
We will continue to fight to:
The in between — SB 113 passes the House and Senate
SB 113 was also used by GOP leadership as a bargaining chip. It bundled the full K-12 general education budget and base special education funding with an expansion of the existing Tax Credit Scholarship voucher program and various policy items that were unable to pass on their own merit.
Going into the last day of the session, we hoped that enough legislators would oppose both SB 113 and HB 2089, forcing leadership to bring a stand alone, clean K-12 funding bill that satisfied Gannon and included the SPED increase without vouchers and other policy items attached.
Unfortunately, because we’ve lost too many pro-public education legislators over the last few election cycles, our expectations proved to be too high. Until we can put more pro-public education candidates in office, we will likely have to continue to fight hard throughout the legislative session and to accept some bad with the good when it comes to education. And that is how things ended with SB 113.
The good in SB 113
A few changes were made to this bill after its initial introduction on April 6.
Funding satisfies Gannon After public outcry (from you and others), leadership’s attempts back on April 6 to mess with the Gannon requirements that would have reduced funding by $215 million were scuttled and the K-12 general education funding now satisfies Gannon.
At-risk high-density weighting extended to 2027 This is something I wrote about early on in the session. Schools with more than 50% of low income students receive extra funding via the school finance formula with this weighting. It’s an important component that was set to expire in 2024. This will now be one less thing we will have to fight for next year.
Open enrollment benefit for teachers A fix was made to the open enrollment policy that starts with the 2024-2025 school year that ensures teachers’ children can attend the school where they teach. This will help with teacher retention.
So-called public facing “parent portal” was removed from the bill. As parents with students attending a school already have access to curriculum, this was really seen as an unnecessary potential “book banning” portal of sorts.
The bad — Voucher Expansion, but limited thanks to our voices
Although SB 113 did expand the existing voucher program, public outcry against vouchers forced leadership to scale back their original attempt at expansion.
The Tax Credit Scholarship voucher program was enacted late in the night on the last day of the 2014 session (i.e., #kslegafterdark). It was touted as being needed for low-income at-risk students and was limited to students eligible for free lunch and attending one of the 100 lowest performing schools. It allows “donors” to contribute up to $500,000 to a private school Scholarship Granting Organization while receiving a 70% tax credit, with an overall program cap of $10 million.
In 2021, a small expansion of the program was passed by attaching it to the K-12 funding bill (sound familiar?). That expansion opened the program up to students eligible for reduced lunch (185% Federal Poverty Level) and attending any public school.
At the beginning of the legislative session, House Bill HB 2048 and Senate Bill SB 83 were introduced with provisions and amendments that would significantly expand the Tax Credit Scholarship voucher program. Below is a summary of items from the original bills that didn’t make it to the final bill (red) to those that did (green).
Despite leadership using the full K-12 education budget as a bargaining chip, general public outcry in opposition to vouchers prevented leadership from getting the full expansion originally attempted.
And most importantly, we stopped the mega Education Savings Account voucher program from taking hold in Kansas. As we’ve seen from the Tax Credit Scholarships, once we see one of these programs that diverts public tax dollars to private or home schools pass into law, the attempts to expand the program will continue.
Overall legislative summary
I hope to provide an update of the other issues/bills we followed throughout the session soon, as well as a compilation of how legislators voted on the bills to help you be more informed at the ballot box. Watch for that as I find some time hopefully in the next week.
Per the Kansas Department of Education