Panel approves lower aid amounts for Kansas schools

Some superintendents are asking for additional funding due to falling oil and gas prices, which caused a drop in collected taxes.

Dozens of Kansas school districts will be getting money from the state for this year’s budget, but not almost as much as they asked for.

Democrats say the statute that established the fund does not require districts to demonstrate efficiencies in order to receive the extraordinary need funding, which is drawn from.

The Wichita district said it expects the number of refugee students from Burma in Asia and Congo and Somalia in Africa to grow by more than 200, compared with last fall’s enrollment.

Under the new block grant system, school districts were supposed to receive roughly the same amount of state aid this year and next year as they received for the 2014-2015 school year.

KAKE News is reporting the council approved $4 million from the state’s “Extraordinary Needs Fund” to 22 districts with declining property valuations and another $2 million for 13 districts whose student populations have increased.

Jim Freeman, the district’s chief financial officer, said in a letter Monday to state officials that numerous students need additional help because they’ve been traumatized in “fleeing persecution, oppression and war”.

Numerous questions asked by lawmakers on the state’s finance council concentrated on just how much districts are spending in the classroom. The state panel awarded extra funds for schools with enrollment growth of more than 2 percent.

Sullivan also recommended not funding requests based on losses due to property tax appeal lawsuits.

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. The Wichita school district requested funding for refugee resettlement and one other district requested general aid. 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.

But the council did agree to come back in October to revisit the Wichita school district’s request for refugee education.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and the top eight leaders of the GOP-dominated Legislature plan to meet Monday at the Statehouse to review the requests.

Wichita Superintendent Jon Allison said those students have special needs for English language education and other services because majority arrive here with limited or no exposure to Western culture or lifestyles. And while there is limited federal funding available to pay for basic needs such as food, clothing and housing, he said there is no funding to defray the educational costs to states.