Brownback’s school finance plan could be going backward
The Hutchinson News
Friday, November 4, 2011
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his team deserve credit for examining how to improve the formula the state uses to determine aid to its public school districts. But the plan not surprisingly is being met with some distrust.
In some ways the Brownback school finance plan would simplify the current formula, and that has some appeal. But it also appears to shift more responsibility for taxation to the local level, and that has the potential to undermine the central goal of the current system — equalization of taxation and quality of education across all school districts, rich and poor.
The now-20-year-old school finance formula was born of a rightful desire to eliminate — or at least reduce — inequities between school districts. Before, taxes varied widely between property-wealthy districts and poor ones. And, as a consequence, educational resources varied widely.
The current formula equalized property taxes statewide, now at 20 mills. And it based the division of state aid primarily based on number of students enrolled.
The Brownback plan appears to roll back the parity in taxation. The current formula always has allowed some local deviation from the standard mill levy. School districts could raise more with the so-called local option budget, but the authority to do so always has been capped, currently at 30 percent of the district’s general fund budget. Brownback would eliminate that restriction. He also would allow school districts to levy a local option sales tax — up to 1.25 percent.
These measures clearly would represent a tax shift from state to local. This is the same strategy legislators have used in recent years to try to dodge responsibility for the state putting more money into public education. It would do that, and it would mean an effective tax increase in most parts of the state.
And, more dangerously, it reintroduces inequity into Kansas public education. It rolls back the clock to when taxes varied widely across the state and so did the quality of education. Rich districts that can raise considerable money with a small tax increase would be free to raise as much as they choose, and offer their students far more resources than poor districts that can raise relatively less even with higher tax rates.
The Legislature should adopt any of the Brownback concepts that can simplify the school finance formula and make it better. But Kansas should not go backward. The state has an obligation to provide the same quality of education to a child in the inner city or rural western Kansas as it does to the one in the wealthy suburbs.