In addition to changes to the “Innovative School District” program in the recently passed HB 2402, there were also changes to Kansas’s free lunch and reduced-price lunch program.
Under United States Department of Agriculture guidelines any school where at least 50% of students are directly qualified to receive a free lunch under the National School Lunch Program can apply for participation in the Community Eligibility Provision which then provides all students at that school with a free lunch.
Under HB 2402, once a district has certified that at least half of the students at one or more schools within the district are eligible for a free lunch, the district would be required to apply for CEP.
“Following such determination, the local board of education would be required by the bill to consider participation in CEP for the school district as a whole or any school within the district determined to be eligible,” the conference committee report reads. “If participation is desired and would not cause financial hardship, the board would approve participation by a majority vote and direct the superintendent to perform any necessary tasks for participation.
“If the local board of education determines that participation in CEP would cause financial hardship for the school district, the bill would require the local board of education to demonstrate such financial hardship in an open public meeting and, by a majority vote, declare that the school district, or school within the school district, elects not to participate in CEP.”
According to Senate Education Committee Chair Senator Renee Erickson (R-Wichita), few Kansas schools are taking advantage of the program.
“What it basically says is, if a certain percentage of your students are eligible for a free lunch, then everyone in your school — and it’s by school building — gets a free lunch. “Very few districts are taking advantage of this. So we want to encourage districts to do that, because … [if] we’re eligible to do this, then we need to take advantage of it.”
Only districts that are approaching the 50% threshold are required to do the annual CEP determination under this bill.
“We want the boards, because a lot of our school boards aren’t familiar with this. So we said, ‘You have to know about this, discuss it, and then decide if you want to apply to be part of the CEP.’
“So just trying to make it a little bit easier for districts to comply with the law,” Erickson said. “We want districts to be intentional about how they’re handling some of these issues.”
The education establishment was, predictably, opposed to the bill.
President of the Kansas Parent Teacher Association Vikkie Mullins claimed — without evidence — in written testimony that the bill would affect at-risk funding.
“[A] $2 million reduction in state budget for reduced lunch copay is not a tradeoff for losing $40 million to districts in funding for at-risk programs and services,” Mullins said.
It’s an assertion Erickson said is false.
“Actually, it bears out that it does not impact at-risk funding,” Erickson said. “We had a different law where you had to verify your eligibility for free lunch, which could impact at-risk funding, but this CEP should not affect it.
“The only way at risk is affected is if you weren’t eligible to begin with, to get a free lunch, because that’s our proxy for at-risk funding. But nothing will affect at risk unless we clamp down on those who aren’t eligible, who are getting a free lunch and therefore getting the at-risk funding.”
Multiple audits find issues with the way at-risk funding is spent
A 2023 report from the Kansas Division of Legislative Post Audit paints a damning picture of mismanagement and misuse of funding for “At Risk” students.
Presented on July 6, 2023, the audit covered the 2021-22 school year and found that the “significant problems” identified in the 2019 audit still exist, and none of the recommendations from that audit had been addressed.
Indeed, state law requires that districts may only use at-risk funding on programs approved by the Kansas State Board of Education. Those programs are required to be “evidence-based,” and be “based on peer-reviewed research that shows the program produced better student outcomes over a 5-year period than would otherwise be achieved.”
In their conclusion, LPA was scathing.
“This is the second time we have evaluated district at-risk expenditures and KSDE’s role in at-risk programs in the last 4 years,” the report reads. Despite calling out several problems and making recommendations to correct those problems in December 2019, little appears to have changed. The problems with the department’s approved at-risk program list have persisted and are especially concerning.”
LPA evaluated 40 programs of the 272 programs on the approved list — some at random, some because they were being used by districts within the state — and found none of them met statutory criteria to even be included on the list.
