House budget boosts aid by $10 million, not promised $73 million surge
BY: TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Rep. Steven Howe’s disappointment that state appropriations to school districts for special education hadn’t kept pace with legal thresholds for the past 14 years reflected a personal connection with students grappling with developmental, emotional, hearing or vision disabilities in the classroom.
“I want to represent students of my district and their families — students like Murray, who is confined to a wheelchair,” Howe said. “I think about people I know and people I’m neighbors with and people their kids go to school with my kids and the teachers that do come alongside them to support them.”
Howe, a Salina Republican, said it was frustrating lawmakers in the House voted to abandon a commitment made by the Kansas Legislature and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in 2024 to get behind an appropriation this year of $73 million for reimbursement of special education services delivered by school districts.
The amount was part of a four-year plan to gradually come into compliance with a law mandating the state pay 92% of extra costs of special education. Currently, the state reimburses districts for 75.4% of excess costs.
A House subcommittee had proposed a $30 million increase this year, but Rep. Kristey Williams, R-Augusta, proposed the funding be deleted from the budget. The House Appropriations Committee settled on a $10 million enhancement. That’s the amount included in the budget bill passed Wednesday by the House.
During debate on House spending priorities, Howe said he contemplated offering an amendment to amplify state aid to special education. He said there were House colleagues who would be upset by his decision, but he was convinced the amendment had no chance of passing.
“My motivation is the ability to come alongside our school kids and their families and to support them and equip them,” Howe said. “I didn’t come here to play political games or to get likes on Facebook. I’m not insinuating that anybody here is motivated by that, but I just don’t participate in that. I don’t understand all the politics that go on here at the Capitol.”
Amendment intercepted
If the special education provision in the House budget were to be subsequently approved by the Kansas Senate and signed into law by the governor, Kansas school districts would be expected to continue diverting resources from general instructional areas to meet demand for special education services.
In Olathe, the annual shortfall stood at $36 million. The comparable annual deficit in the Blue Valley school district was $13.7 million. The hit in the Shawnee Mission district was $23 million annually. In Salina schools represented by Howe, the difference amounted to $5.4 million annually.
The bill forwarded to the Senate added $10 million to the estimated $601 million annually devoted by the state to special education in K-12 schools. It’s not clear whether that amount would keep pace with inflationary pressure on public schools or allow the state to slip further behind in the quest for 92% compliance.
Rep. Jared Ousley, D-Merriam, did propose an amendment to the budget that would have increased special education funding to local school districts by a total of $30 million.
He also proposed the additional $20 million for special education be drawn from a special fund fed by sports gambling revenue and designated to support recruitment of a professional sports franchise to Kansas.
A bill signed into law last year created a mechanism for the state to finance 70% of the cost of building new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs or Kansas City Royals, which have been located in Missouri for decades.
‘Bunch of idiots’
The idea of using sports stadium seed money to get closer to the state’s obligation to special education students was opposed by Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stilwell Republican involved in developing the stadium legislation. He urged the House to reject Ousley’s amendment, and it was crushed 40-76.
“The fact that you’re going to take the money out of this sports fund in the middle of negotiating with a couple of great opportunities for the state of Kansas …. one of the teams is close to announcing a deal. What if that deal is in the state of Kansas? We’re sending them a message that says, ‘Hey, you know, never mind. We’re going to be just like Jackson County and we’re going to pull the rug out from underneath you and look like a bunch of idiots.'”
In April 2024, voters in Jackson County, Missouri, voted against a sales tax extension that would have supported renovations at Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs and built a new ballpark for the Royals in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Rep. Alexis Simmons, D-Topeka, said she understood what it meant to attend a Kansas public school with inadequate resources. She recalled attending school in classrooms that didn’t have enough desks for students. She recommended Kansas legalize cannabis sales and devote that tax revenue to K-12 education.
In this region, recreational marijuana sales have been made legal in Missouri and Colorado while Nebraska and Oklahoma legalized medicinal cannabis sales.
“We’re telling these kinds in special education that their needs are going to come last,” Simmons said.