By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
Following last week’s decision by the Shawnee County District Court that Gov. Sam Brownback’s block funding of Kansas schools violates the Kansas Constitution, Hays USD 489 is now being forced to wait to finalize next year’s budget.
Superintendent Dean Katt is now waiting to see what Brownback will do — and trying to plan for the upcoming school year, which begins in less than two months.
In response to the court’s ruling, Katt said “I can’t say it’s a big surprise,” adding “everything that the governor and the legislators, I guess leadership, has done, has just added onto this.”
After the long legislative session, the Legislature suggested Brownback’s school funding plan was equitable, while school officials and the court found Brownback’s funding plan less than desirable for the state.
“They try to spin that and make that sound like all of this money is going into the classrooms, and it’s far from the truth,” Katt said.
Brownback was quick to criticize the ruling, issuing a statement saying the court exceeded its authority with the decision.
“The three-judge panel has once again violated its constitutional authority with this ruling,” Brownback said. “It has now taken upon itself the powers specifically and clearly assigned to the legislative and executive branches of government. In doing so, it has replaced the judgment of Kansas voters with the judgment of unelected activist judges. For the first time ever, the state will invest more than $4 billion in K-12 education in Kansas in fiscal year 2016.”
But Katt agreed with the court.
“The judges have seen through the smoke and mirrors again and trying to hold them accountable, then you hear about all the activist judges,” he said. “I guess an activist judge is one that you don’t agree with the decision. If it was going the way the governor wanted, then they would be great.”
While political wrangling over school funding continues in Topeka, USD 489 is finding it difficult to even plan for next year. Hays USD 489 had budgeted expenditures of just more than $42 million in 2014-15.
“It’s just hard to even know where we are,” Katt said. “We need to see what happens, and every day it’s a little bit less time to prepare and have our budget completely done by August. … It’s going to be difficult.”
“We keep waiting to hear something more. In a webinar I listened to, there’s a lot of speculation what would happen. … Obviously, it’s going to be appealed, so that process will take months,” he added.
This long wait for a new state funding plan has created chaos in the Kansas Department of Education, as they scramble to figure out what is going to happen, then pass that information along to districts.
“I know the Kansas State Department of Ed waited and waited and waited until the legislators made a decision, and they started doing all their budget documents and changing formulas and doing all those things — and then Friday all of that changed again, Katt said. “Next week we’ll be going to the budget workshop the State Department of Ed puts on, and really I don’t think we will have a clear understanding of what even the budget document is going to look like.”
Meanwhile, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt filed a request with the Kansas Supreme Court this week asking for a stay on the district court’s ruling. Schmidt calling the district court’s ruling unprecedented. While that battle is just beginning, USD 489 is operating under the assumption that funding will remain similar to last year, no matter how the funding formula is created.
“What I’m thinking, whether it’s right or not I don’t know, but they will go ahead and continue with the block grant philosophy right now and see what happens later,” Katt said. “On the other hand, they could just decide we’re going to take care of it and see a big change in what the budget document will look like.”
The unconstitutional funding plan would not have had much impact on Hays schools, but now that could change.
“We don’t receive a lot of state aid. I had stated previously that the block grant didn’t hurt Hays as much as some of the other options, so now my fear is again if the governor comes in and says ‘Well, I’m going to do allotments’ then that could hurt us,” Katt said. “(Block funding) didn’t hurt us that much, the mill levy and the local option budget would have gone up if the state goes ahead and pays for capital outlay state aid, we don’t receive any, so that’s not going to make any difference, but if they do fund the local option budget, it’s not more money, it’s just keeps the mill levy down for us.”
Without knowing what will happen in the upcoming weeks, USD 489 must prepare to open its schools, with contingency plans already in place.
“We’re in the process of closing the last fiscal year out right now, and we’ll have some carryover funds that we’ll put in contingency reserve with the anticipation that we’re going to receive some sort of cut next year,” Katt said. “I just wish I knew what to expect next week. … We thought we knew with the block grant how much money we would see to the penny, basically what we received last year would be the same and started the budget process on that.”