ShawneeDispatch.com

Most school administrators aren't going to hold their breath and wait for the Kansas Legislature to come up with school finance plan anytime soon.

Last week, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius announced she had reached an agreement to move forward on school finance with legislative leaders. The plans must satisfy the Kansas Supreme Court requirement to equalize funding for schools throughout the state.

"We don't put a lot of stock in the early plans because they change so drastically," said Sharon Zoellner, De Soto superintendent of schools.

Although two plans were announced, one in the House and one in the Senate, that would give about $600 to $500 million to Kansas schools, Sen. Kay O'Connor, R-Olathe, said that figure was actually much higher.

"The numbers they're giving are incomplete numbers," she said. "The $500 and $600 million do not take into account the compounding effect. If you add $150 million this year, the next year you add that $150 million again."

O'Connor said the plans would actually give about $180 to $150 million to schools throughout the state, enough to bankrupt the state's budget.

"So we're talking about a billion dollars," she said. "Why are they spending so much more money if they don't have it? Even gambling won't bring enough money, and that means a tax increase."

O'Connor said she wasn't in favor of approving a new education finance plan because she said the courts didn't have the authority to tell the legislature how much to spend on schools.

"That's why we need an amendment to tell them they can't tell us how much money to spend," she said.

According to the Kansas Department of Education, both Shawnee Mission and De Soto school districts will receive more money in the first year of each plan. The Shawnee Mission district would receive about $5.7 million the first year of the House plan and about $7.4 million the first year of the Senate plan. The De Soto school district would receive about $927,911 the first year of the House plan and $1.2 million the first year of the Senate plan.

Tim Rooney, director of finance for the Shawnee Mission district, said the plan fell short of the district's financial needs.

"We could support the current plan, but we think they need to recognize the issue we've seen for a long time -- that we need to have more local control," he said.

Kansas school districts are currently limited by the amount of local option budget they can receive from local patrons to 27 percent of their general operating fund. The current law will raise the 27 percent limit to 29 percent and then to 30 percent the following year.

"There's been an attempt by the Senate that they should move some of the local option budget over to the general fund so the court will consider that being used in the core educational programs," he said. "The first year would require districts to take 2.5 percent (of the local option budget) and put it in the general fund. They're just taking money from one hand and putting it in the other."

Rooney said the Shawnee Mission district is in favor of any plan that allows patrons in the district to do what they've wanted for years -- provide more of their own funding for schools.

Although it wouldn't provide much direct benefit to schools in the Shawnee area, Rooney said one benefit from the House plan was giving more at-risk weighting to schools with high concentrations of urban poor youth.

"While we support money for the urban poor, we don't think the plan adequately addresses the issues we've tried to tell legislators for some time," he said.

Sen. Nick Jordan, R-Shawnee, said the two plans would at least give a starting point for legislators to negotiate. Jordan said his concern was that Johnson County districts are continuing to be in the bottom 20 percent of Kansas schools receiving state aid.

"We've found out what our leaders think," he said. "Now we just need to know what each of our legislative bodies thinks."