Kansas Supreme Court gives state until June 30 to properly fund public schools

[Benton]

(02-12-2016, 02:18 PM)michaelsean Wrote: What is block funding?

The government (normally the granting agent is the feds, in this case it's the state) gives you a chunk of money with only a few strings attached. Like if it's for sewer improvements, they might give your municipality 80% of what it says it will cost. Your local taxes are supposed to cover the other 20%. And the feds will normally have only a few restrictions (no lead pipes, has to address a certain percentage of the population, has to be completed within a year, etc). That's opposed to specific taxes that most places use to generate funds and those dollars generated go to very specific uses.

In this instance, instead of saying 'it costs X to run the district, and you have to follow these regulations for graduation rates, text books, teacher requirements and salary, pupil to teacher ratio, etc' Kansas is saying, 'it costs X to run a district, here's N, figure it out on your own.'

The outcry is because some districts get more because essentially the state says so without much reasoning.

Edit: I thought this article explained it a bit, too.
http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article37377267.html

The block-grant system, passed by the Legislature at Brownback’s request this year, essentially freezes funding for two years while the Legislature works toward crafting a new school finance plan. A three-judge school-finance court has ruled that the block grants fail to meet the constitutional requirement for the state to provide suitable funding for education – a ruling currently on appeal at the state Supreme Court.

Under the old school finance formula, a district’s revenue was determined by its enrollment, plus “weightings” providing extra money for poor, limited-English and other harder-to-teach students.

As an example of the stress brought on by the switch to block grants, the report cited Wichita schools’ struggle to fund education for an influx of foreign refugee children, even though the district has raised taxes, cut spending and dipped into reserves to fund this year’s operations.

“The district is facing a squeeze from growing enrollment, increased operating expenditures, and flat state aid,” the report said. “The quandary is not unique to Wichita Public Schools.”