ShawneeDispatch.com

Shawnee school districts are split over the local funding piece of an education finance plan en route to the Kansas Supreme Court this week.

If the Court approves the bill, Kansas would not impose a statewide tax increase, but it would reallocate some existing funds to schools. The most substantial revenue increase is only a potential one -- Shawnee Mission USD 512 and De Soto USD 232 would be allowed to secure more money by raising taxes locally.

That's something for which Shawnee Mission has lobbied for years. Though the bill isn't perfect, it answers some of the district's biggest needs, said Shawnee Mission budget and finance manger Tim Rooney.

De Soto Superintendent Sharon Zoellner said she was not pleased with the plan. De Soto could raise large amounts of money in theory, she said, but that would mean maxing out local funding sources, which wasn't affordable in practice.

"We aren't going to do that," she said. "We aren't going to do any of those because our tax levy is so high."

De Soto's mill levy is 72.7 mills, while Shawnee Mission levies 42.7 mills. A mill is $1 in property tax for every $1,000 of assessed valuation.

On Jan. 3, the Kansas Supreme Court decreed the state was failing in its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public schools. The Court gave the Legislature until April 12 to devise a plan that would provide schools with more money.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius criticized the Legislature's solution but agreed to deliver it to the Court for review without vetoing it.

"Despite some patchwork progress that provides more money for schools, I still see no long-term plan, especially in funding public education for years to come," Sebelius said. "In the end, this bill fails Kansas children, fails their families, and fails our schools."

Adopted March 30, House Bill 2247 includes some additional state aid and some options for local funding:

• Base state aid per pupil would be increased to $4,222, which includes an $115 increase and some weighting adjustments. At $3,863, the current base state aid per pupil has not changed since 2003.
• Funds would be increased for programs directed to at-risk, bilingual and special education students. It also would create extraordinary declining enrollment weighting to benefit shrinking districts.
• All Kansas districts would be allowed to raise local property taxes to 30 percent of their general fund budgets. The current limit is 25 percent.
• Shawnee Mission and De Soto are two of 17 districts statewide that would be allowed to increase local taxes an additional 5 percent to raise funds for teacher pay. The designation was given to districts deemed to have high costs of living.

Under the plan, the De Soto school district could see a $907,900 increase in state funding, or about $199 per student. Shawnee Mission schools could see a $5.2 million increase, or $187 per pupil, according the State Department of Education.

The Department calculated that if the districts took advantage of the local funding allowance for teacher salaries, De Soto could raise an additional $1.2 million and Shawnee Mission could raise $6.8 million.

Though the bill has some pitfalls, namely a lack of long-term funding and equalization of weighting factors, Rooney said the legislation would be a boon to Shawnee Mission.

"We are pleased to have provisions in the new law that we've lobbied for for a number of years, such as additional local control and a provision for extraordinary enrollment decline," he said.

Zoellner said the bill wasn't an acceptable solution for De Soto schools because it did not include enough state aid. Even though law would allow it, she said the district was not in a position to take advantage of higher local limits.

"We live in a high-cost area, but we are not a wealthy district," she said. "We cannot afford to raise our tax levy like that."

Besides having no plan for long-term funding, Zoellner said the new bill shared another major flaw with the status quo -- the bulk of funding increases must come from local sources, which are varied in existence and availability across the state.

"And that's the problem with the plan," she said. "It helps some and not others."

Zoellner and Rooney said the Court's action could be anyone's guess.

"The issue is so difficult," Rooney said. "That's why the Legislature has struggled with it for so long."

-- Scott Rothschild (srothschild@newsmwc.com) contributed to this story.