Legislative Report, 3/21/01, Education Report #3
Doug Patterson
Kansas State Representative 28th District
Johnson County
12712 El Monte
Leawood, Kansas 66209
913-897-6905
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State Capital Room 174W
Topeka, Kansas 66612
785-296-7631
DougPatterson@House.State.KS.US
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Committees:
Judiciary
Commerce, Business and Labor
Health and Human Services
KANSAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
http://www.ink.org/public/legislative/index.cgi
http://www.ink.org/public/legislative/status/status.cgi
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March 21, 2001
EDUCATION REPORT #3
On March 19, 2001, House Speaker Kent Glasscock, along with House Minority Leader
Jim Garner announced an additional K thru 3 school improvement plan. The cost of this initiative is $7.5 million in the coming fiscal year and $18.4 million the year after. The initiative is not necessarily in addition and/or above Gov. Graves announcement last week. In fact, the Glasscock proposal appears to be separate and distinct from the Governor’s initiatives involving an annual increase of $180 million funding. These two proposals are, as it has been described, "apples and oranges". Therefore, the Glasscock proposal represents a $26 million program over two years for grades K-3 only, whereas the plan suggested by Gov. Graves representing an additional annual initiative for all grades K-12. Blue Valley representatives cannot support the Speaker’s plan alone. I’ve heard that loud and clear.
I need your help. For certain legislators in Johnson County and a prevailing attitude of outstate Kansas legislators, there is a serious hesitation to increase any taxes for any educational purpose this year. Therefore, the Speaker’s proposal works for them. It may not involve any form of tax increase.
The problem I am running into involves the comparison of the Blue Valley/Shawnee Mission school district to outstate school districts. The premise of any school financing formula is to provide all students within the state of Kansas with a suitable education. Each student should receive as equal an education as any other student within the state. This is obviously a very important and necessary goal. But, this equality does not exist. And that is the problem I am facing in arguing increased financing for schools within our Johnson County school districts.
For example, one representative in a rural area of Kansas was asking me about our new high school in Blue Valley. I proudly described how sophisticated this new school was, and described the new swimming pool. He described that in his community, the swimming pool for the high school class was in the basement of this older building. The ceiling of the basement collapsed approximately five years ago, and the school district has not had funds to repair or replace it. Therefore he described that the only swimming pool for middle school and high school students has not been available for over five years.
I also told a representative of the quality technology in our newer schools. Each classroom within Blue Valley North is abundantly supplied with computers. The representative described that a high school with over 200 students within his district had one computer. This computer is used by school administration as well as for classroom purposes. See the problem?
We are all painfully aware of the three school closings within the Shawnee Mission school district which has approximately 30,000 students. In addition to these school closings, Shawnee Mission may reduce its budget by about $5 million in one year. In comparison however, a Manhattan school district has approximately 5700 students and will be closing two schools within its district. Additionally, of a substantially lesser budget than Shawnee Mission, the funding for the Manhattan school district will be reduced by $2 million. Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it.
We are all very proud that Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission schools boast of nation wide achievements in academic testing such as the ACT and SAT results. Teacher salaries within Blue Valley and Shawnee Mission are on the high side of the median salary and benefits for such professionals. Additionally, we are all proud that our systems have sufficient administrative staffing. Nationwide, the administrative staff of Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley is close to the highest paid administrators and are on the high side of the ratio of administration to teacher and student populations. We owe no apology for this. But compare our problems to out-state school problems. We have to do that in order to convince a majority of the legislators state wide to vote the right way.
Here is your homework assignment. Answer this question: "What exactly is our funding problem to support a suitable education for students locally and statewide?" That is the question posed to me, for which I do not think we have a good collective answer. As a matter of fact, do we have an adequate definition of a "suitable education" for students for which we are seeking all of this funding? No, we do not.
Public funding for education needs to reconnect with a vision of where we need to go and how to get there, not just a simple inflation factor applied to a Base formula relatively unconnected with any meaningful measure of the cost of providing a suitable education to all of our kids.
We read your e-mails and a majority of the Johnson County delegation of Representatives have been carrying your message in Topeka as to the school funding emergency. But this emergency is ill defined. With a Base formula so flawed, not defined or attributable to any material functional component of a child’s education, any measure of education funding using the Base as a standard is evidence of nothing.
Given the quality of our Blue Valley/Shawnee Mission schools compared to all other schools in Kansas, we need to define exactly what our funding problem is....not just write e-mails and saying that we need more money.
Lets all work on our homework assignment. In the meantime, I have learned a very important lesson in my short time as your representative: It’s easy to ask for more money, but it’s a lot easier to say "No".
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Please feel free to forward this to anyone and if you have e-mail addresses of other interested members of our community, please send them to me for inclusion in this address book.
Respectfully,
Doug Patterson
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