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Minutes for SB251 - Committee on Senate Select Committee on Education Finance
Short Title
Creating the Kansas school equity and enhancement act.
Minutes Content for Tue, May 23, 2017
Chairperson Denning opened the meeting up to discuss SB251.
Eddie Penner, Legislative Research Department, briefed the Committee on three holdover items from yesterday's meeting. First, he presented a document that lists aid amounts by category and district for 2017-18. (Attachment 1)
Mr. Penner went over the specifics of these categories and answered questions from Chairperson Denning and Senator Pettey on specific dollar amounts in various categories and how the document compares the results of SB251 with current block grant funding.
Mr. Penner also presented a graph, in response to a question from Senator Hensley, on the impact of CPI-U Midwest indexing on BASE aid in future years. (Attachment 2) Senator Baumgardner asked clarifying questions from Mr. Penner on this inflation index and if there is any correlation on predicted future enrollment presented on the graph. Mr. Penner stated that there was not.
Senator Bollier asked Mr. King if the Legislature should consider LOB funding in meeting the Gannon Court's adequacy requirements. Mr. King stated that this analysis has changed in Gannon as what existed in Montoy, since the Court in the latter case refused to consider LOB in the adequacy analysis, while the Gannon Court considers all spending that is reasonably calculated to improve K-12 student performance. Senator Bollier further asked how the Court considers LOB authorization given by the Legislature versus that actually used by local districts. Mr. King answered that the spending that matters to the Gannon Court (i.e. spending that improves K-12 performance) is more than that listed on Mr. Penner's chart or included in the school finance formula (i.e. pre-K and social services spending that helps under-performing students). Mr. King further answered that the Court will likely consider increased LOB spending for adequacy purposes and estimate utilization of increased LOB authority (as provided by Mr. Penner) to determine how increased LOB authority will impact actual LOB spending.
Senator Baumgardner asked which fund has higher cash reserves, LOB or State General Fund. Mr. Penner was unsure, but later learned that they were $16 million and $128 million respectively. Senator Baumgardner asked Mr. King if the Courts are looking at what funding they have or what fund they expend, asking whether reserves are considered K-12 funding for adequacy purposes. Mr. King acknowledged that this question had received little, if any, consideration by the Court, but felt comfortable in saying that the Court focuses on actual expenditures that help students not the size of district bank accounts.
Chairperson Denning asked Mark Tallman, KASB, to answer Committee questions on a 2014 report examining public school systems finances by states. (Attachment 3)
A discussion ensued on successful states (that surpass Kansas on a number of key performance metrics) and the source of education funds in Kansas compared to other states. Mr. Tallman noted the data is from a report showing that Kansas spends more state dollars and fewer local dollars on K-12 education than most states. Chairperson Denning discussed timely payments and noted that one bump in SGF levels could greatly harm payment timeliness.
Senator Pettey asked Mr. Penner if the districts that would lose funds over SB251 suffer that fate due to loss of enrollment. He answered that he believes that observation was accurate.
During the Committee meeting on May 22nd, Senator Hensley had requested information concerning what the State Aid and property tax would be if all school districts used their maximum authority for Cost of Living, Capital Outlay, and Local Option Budget. Senator Hensley passed out a document from Dale Dennis, KSBE, that presents a table with the information requested. (Attachment 4) Senator Bollier questioned why there is a difference between the KLRD totals and KSBE totals. Mr. Penner and Mr. Dennis addressed the differences.
With no further questions the Committee adjourned for a break.
