A K-12 budget packed with bad policy…including hidden tax increases
Open enrollment is just one of the problematic policies bundled in the K-12 budget that has to be taken up when the Legislature returns next week.
The proposed legislation leaves little room for flexibility for school districts. It takes away authority from locally elected school board members to make decisions regarding their own transfer policies and it creates an administrative burden of requiring school districts to define capacity for each grade level for each building in the school district.
Once that capacity is established, school districts are expected to accept transfer students so long as the capacity is there. If more students apply than there is capacity, the school must conduct a lottery, as detailed in the bill, where students are selected at random to fill the available spots.
Once a non-resident student has been accepted into the district, they have a spot in the district until they graduate. Any siblings of those accepted students will then get priority in future years, should they choose to also transfer.
The bill neglects to account for any shifts in capacity of residential students. For example, what happens if a new neighborhood is developed within the district and the district sees an influx of residential students? Is the school then responsible for continuing to accommodate the out of district transfers while also accommodating the new influx of residential students? If the capacity issues result in the need for a new attendance center, only those living within the boundaries of the district will pay for it. Yet, those outside of the district will benefit from it.
There is no doubt this “open enrollment” proposal would force a property tax increase in many school districts.
How does this happen? It’s caused by the fact that school districts raise a certain percentage of money for their educational programs from a local property tax levy commonly called the “local option budget.” School districts receive a base budget amount per pupil from the state and are then given the opportunity to raise a local levy equivalent to up to 33% of that state aid. The statewide average is 31%.
When state aid increases - either through an increase in funding or an increase in enrollment - that 31% becomes a bigger dollar amount and the school district mill levy increases to keep the amount of local effort at the same percentage. When more students enroll in the district, state aid follows them resulting in a larger base budget. Thirty-one percent of a larger base is a larger number. The mill levy increases to collect that larger amount.
In the case of the open enrollment proposal, the legislature is forcing local school districts to admit non-resident students. State aid will follow those students increasing the general fund budget of the district and creating a situation where the resident families will pay more in property taxes due to the enrollment of non-residents who are not paying anything into the local effort.
The parents of non-resident students are not paying into the local effort because they don’t own property in the district. They are also not paying into the capital outlay fund which supports building maintenance. They are not paying on any bond issue that was passed to build the classrooms they are now accessing. And, while they may be paying for those things in their district of residence, that money is not available to the non-residential district their children attend to pay for the education of those children. The resident district taxpayers are subsidizing the education of non-resident students whose families pay no local taxes to support the programs. How is that fair?
Beyond this unfair tax policy is another proposal in the bill that will use Kansas tax dollars to pay for the post-secondary education of out-of-state students.
Conservatives are proposing an expansion of the Promise Scholarship program. This worthy program currently provides scholarships to Kansans attending Kansas Community Colleges and Tech Colleges and pursuing certification in a high need field. The last-minute expansion in this conservative proposal will now use your tax dollars to provide scholarships to individuals from out of state to attend our schools. You will be paying for the education of individuals who have never paid a dime in taxes to the state of Kansas. Shouldn’t Kansas tax dollars be spent for the benefit of Kansas taxpayers?
There is absolutely no question that the quality of education that any student in Kansas receives should be not dependent upon their zip code. But forcing schools to permanently accept transfer students is not the way to go.
Kansas legislators should be interested in supporting Kansas learners and Kansas taxpayers. The way to do that is to strip these unfair policies out of the bill and pass a clean school funding bill. Let local school boards decide for themselves if non-resident students can enroll in their districts. Local control on this issue has worked perfectly well for years. There is no reason for the state to meddle in local control and local tax issues.