The four largest school districts in Johnson County, Blue Valley, DeSoto, Olathe, and Shawnee Mission, are joining forces with the intention of suing the state over what they claim is chronic underfunding of special education (SPED).
The group’s news release read in part:
Kansas lawmakers and state elected officials have had well over a decade to meet their legal obligation to fully fund special education. Instead, they have repeatedly chosen to underfund public schools while local districts, educators, and taxpayers shoulder the burden. Participating districts have exhausted every opportunity to work collaboratively with the Legislature and state elected officials to resolve this issue, including meeting individually with lawmakers, providing written and in-person testimony, and engaging through established advocacy channels. The time for waiting on the Legislature to do the right thing has passed, and the time for accountability is now.
The State of Kansas must meet its constitutional and statutory responsibilities to adequately fund public education. Kansas students, educators, and communities can no longer afford the consequences of continued inaction. Our students deserve better.
The quartet’s contention that SPED is underfunded in Kansas has been disputed as often as it has been claimed. State statutes require Kansas to reimburse local districts 92% of their “excess costs” of providing SPED services after subtracting basic state aid and federal aid for SPED.
Writing for the Kansas Policy Institute, owners of the The Sentinel, CEO Dave Trabert points out the four districts and the education establishment aren’t counting all the SPED money districts receive:
The statutory formula for determining excess costs doesn’t account for all the money school districts receive related to special education funding. It does not count weightings for at-risk, bilingual, career & tech ed, transportation, and high-density at-risk, even though (then) Deputy Commissioner Craig Neuenswander says special ed students are eligible for those weightings. It also excludes Local Option Budget (LOB) money related to special education funding. (Districts collect over $1 billion in local property tax and state equalization aid to supplement other state aid.) The LOB money related to the regular education funding for special ed students is part of the formula, but Neuenswander said he didn’t know why all of the LOB money isn’t counted.
The unaccounted-for LOB funding alone puts special education funding above the 92% level.
Trabert maintains another funding source not considered: SPED cash-on-hand.
Additionally, Kansas school districts began the current school year with $260 million in carryover cash reserves in special education funds, and those that host special education co-ops had an additional $22 million. Districts are not legally required to maintain special education cash reserves, and several have zero ending balances. USD 500 Kansas City is one district that maintains a zero balance, and Olathe is close to zero.
Special education cash reserve increases result from districts transferring too much money from their General Funds. Some transfers are necessary, but districts would have more money to spend on regular education if they did a better job of managing their finances (as Kansas City does).
Legislator responds to special education claim
State Rep. Kristey Williams, a member of the Special Education Funding Task Force, was interviewed on Mundo in the Morning and Host Pete Mundo asked her reaction to the move by the JOCO districts:
“Personally, it is, it’s very disappointing, because reading their press release, they claim that we’re not fulfilling our legal obligation, yet they failed to remember that our own law that suggests 92% also says it is subject to appropriations. That means every year, when it comes to the legislature, they have to look at all of our expenditures and decide that total amount. The second point I would bring up about this, regarding their claim that we are consistently and deliberately not funding and not fulfilling our legal obligation, is that we did fully fulfill the Gannon lawsuit that went to the Kansas Supreme Court. They dismissed the case and said we are fully constitutionally funding our students. That was 2019, and in addition, that included special education.”
Mundo: “What do you think their goal is, to bully the state?”
Williams: “Number one, let’s just remember that they are actually not suing the Kansas Legislature. They are suing Kansas taxpayers. Number two, we have had a huge focus on outcomes. Give us our outcomes; make sure that kids are reading at third grade, and that they’re able to do basic math, and we’ll provide whatever you need to make sure that happens. Unfortunately, in the last few years, in fact, in the last decade, we’ve seen outcomes continue to decline. Kids are not doing better. And yet they’re still demanding more money.
“Why are they doing this? I’m not sure, because, frankly, the cash reserves for K through 12, that money that school districts set aside, in the past 10 years, they have added some $500 million to those cash reserves. So they’re sitting on $2.1 billion of cash reserves (statewide). And that includes special education cash reserves; there’s about $278 million available, and it also is on the increase overall in the state of Kansas. So they’ve got the dollars; the state legislature has provided the annual increases per the Kansas Supreme Court, but it’s never quite enough. So it’s really confusing to the legislature.”
Trabert and Rep. Williams may have an unlikely ally in the special education funding debate: Governor Laura Kelly, according to some recent tweets from the governor touting her administration’s record:
