The Emporia Gazette

February 13, 2012

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Financing education has become a challenge for the board of education in Chase County, where more cattle than people populate the rolling Flint Hills.

The small number of students in the county, coupled with its vast and valuable acreage, has caused the state of Kansas to conclude that the school district is a wealthy one.

That classification — disputed strongly by the Chase County school board — has resulted in a budget nightmare for the district, which does not receive the state aid needed to fund basic costs.

The lack of state aid, coupled with the inability to gain the funds it needs by raising property taxes, has forced the board of education to make some hard choices, with more such decisions on the agendas for future meetings.

The board already has made cuts in teachers’ and administrators’ positions and in other areas, Superintendent Greg Markowitz said.

The reductions for next year so far:

• library services, which will be provided under a contract through the Greenbush Consortium

• counseling

• part-time teachers

• nursing services, which also will be done under contract next year

• deferring textbook purchases next year, to save $71,000

• cutting administrators from four to three, with the fourth administrator becoming a classified employee working in curriculum and some counseling duties; the three remaining administrators will share the fourth administrator’s former duties.

• cutting physical education department by 0.6 of a position

• cutting the business position from full-time to half-time

• cutting C team games and considering changes in activity routes

• reductions in activities

• eliminating Parents as Teachers program

• eliminating the noon kindergarten bus route

“They’re looking at, as you can see, just a little bit of everything,” Markowitz said. “They’re still up in the air about what they’re going to do about athletics.”

Teachers affected already have been notified of the changes in their status. Non-renewals of the contracts, he emphasized, had nothing to do with job performance and everything to do with money.

“Here’s the cold hard fact: How does the district pay for jobs that they can’t afford?” Markowitz asked.

Employee costs make up about 65 percent of the school budget, with utility and building maintenance costs also taking a hefty share.

“So our fixed costs to maintain these old outdated buildings is just killing us, but because of the tax situation, we don’t have any money (to build),” Markowitz said. “It is really complex. It has no easy answers is what I’m trying to say.”

Officials say there simply is not enough money available to pay for expenses in the district’s current circumstances.

“We get no help on our capital outlay, we get no help on our bonded interest,” he said; “we get no help on our local option budget. That’s the paradox that we’re caught in.”

The situation came through the school-finance formula that dictates status and holds a long list of add-on funds — “weightings” — that routinely bring extra funds to other school districts across the state. Weightings include extra monies for English language-learners, at-risk students, special education, new construction and other special categories that do not apply to Chase County schools, but provide bonus funds for many districts.

School board member Bill Halvorsen, who also is an attorney, explained the changes in school finance that have occurred since the early 1990s, when districts primarily were locally financed.

A major revision in school finance occurred in 1992, when for the first time, the state imposed a 20-mill assessment for schools on all property in the state, Halvorsen said.

“Well, that quickly became inadequate,” he said.

The local option budget or LOB then allowed districts to tax local taxpayers for additional money.

“Well, that went a year or two and a lot of districts started complaining they were too poor and they couldn’t afford it,” Halvorsen said.

The Legislature’s response was to pay a portion of the LOB to 82 percent of the school districts in the state.

“Now the problem is the way they defined wealth,” Halvorsen said. “They defined it as taking the assets valuation of the district, dividing it by the number of students and getting a fraction, and if that fraction was in the 18 percent of the highest, you didn’t get any money.”

Chase County, because of its small number of students and the value of the land, falls within the 18 percent high end.

“Now here’s the catch,” Halvorsen said. “In fact, our district only has one-seventh of the average amount of wealth. But we only have one-tenth of the average number of students, so when you put that ratio together, it makes us appear to be wealthy. So, consequently, we get no money. ... When you get right down to it, what this did was benefit the urban districts.”

Halvorsen said that local legislators had been sympathetic to the situation in Chase County, but because help would require rewriting the school-finance formula, no changes have yet been made, despite Halvorsen’s and Markowitz’s testimonies several times before the Kansas House and Senate.

“I think that the Legislature understands that the entire formula is going to have to be revisited, so we’re kind of caught in a Catch-22,” Markowitz said. “In the meantime, the kids of Chase County continue to suffer, basically because of a mathematical flaw.”

Halvorsen agreed, and praised some of the legislators, including state Sen. Jim Barnett, for their unsuccessful efforts to help Chase County.

Many of the legislators understood and sympathized with the school district’s situation, but could do nothing now to change it.

“I’m not ragging on the legislators,” Halvorsen said. “They really are in a situation where they don’t have any money. (The Chase County anomaly) was one of those unintended consequences” of the school-finance formula.

He estimated that because of the sluggish economy and the complexities of school finance, it will be several years before the Legislature will be able to bring parity to the schools.

The Chase County school board already had made some difficult decisions in an effort to operate more efficiently, and it already has consolidated its schools to make the most of its teachers, staff and budget.

“We have seven communities in this county that don’t have schools any more, and in reward for that we’re considered a wealthy district,” Markowitz said. “It’s a double-edged sword. ...When we sucked in more ground with not many kids on it, we became richer and richer.”

Mandated programs by state and federal authorities added expenses that simultaneously are not funded by state or federal governments.

“We do the same things a large district does and we don’t get any money to do it, and we don’t have anyone to pass it on to,” Markowitz said.

The district already has a 53-mill LOB in place, and adding to existing property taxes is not an affordable option for taxpayers.

The situation is complicated further because of a continued loss in student enrollment that, in effect, makes the district even richer, according to the formula.

“We need industry, and we need the kids that go with them, with the (parents) that are working in that industry,” Markowitz said.