TOPEKA -The State Finance Council on Monday reviewed “extraordinary needs” requests from 40 Kansas school districts, providing additional funding totaling more than $6 million, according to a media release from Governor Brownback’s office
A closer look at the Extraordinary Need State Aid Applications
The extraordinary needs funds was established as part of SB 7, the historic K-12 education block grant passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor. Under the block grant, the state aid appropriation for these 40 schools was estimated to increase by $70.3 million this school year.
“Although state aid funding for each of these schools increased, we continue to see remnants of the old funding formula creating financial challenges for some districts,” said Governor Brownback. “We saw today that this process provides districts with reduced valuation, an option for relief that was not available to them under the old formula.”
Of the 40 requests, 22 were from districts requesting additional funding due to reductions in assessed valuation, generally resulting from lower oil and gas prices across the nation, while 16 addressed increased enrollment. The Wichita school district requested funding for refugee resettlement and one other district requested general aid.
In response to a question from the council, Kansas State Department of Education deputy commissioner Dale Dennis confirmed that under the previous education formula, school districts would have no recourse, saying “in past years if you dropped in valuations, you ‘ate it’ for a year; then you got state aid the following year and it helped make it up.”
With the new Block Grant, districts now have the opportunity to request additional funding for valuation decreases in excess of 5 percent from the previous year. Based on this criteria, the 22 districts received a total of $4,057,653 in additional funding. Under the previous formula, they would not have received additional LOB state aid in this current school year. Instead, their options would have been to increase local property taxes, or cut the LOB budgets by more than $5 million to cope with this reduction.
Of the 16 school districts requesting assistance because of increased enrollment, 13 districts experiencing a 2 percent or greater enrollment increase, received $2,009,521 in additional funding.
According to the Kansas State Department of Education, today’s extraordinary needs review is the last for the current school year. The State Finance Council will meet in October to address the funding request from Wichita schools once enrollment numbers for refugees are clarified and for further discussion on possible additional funding for the Moscow, Quinter, Deerfield and Garden City school districts.
Kansas needs a school funding formula that is sustainable, stable, and predictable, which puts more money into the classroom and improves student outcomes. The Governor looks forward to working with the Legislature to craft a new formula for public schools.