Funding Public Education in Kansas

You’re holding in your hands Ingram’s inaugural “Kansas City at the Crossroads” feature. This report is the end product of a “Kansas City at the Crossroads” panel discussion convened by Ingram’s with the collaboration of Kansas City Public Television (KCPT).

The only independent, freewheeling discussion of its kind in the area, “Kansas City at the Crossroads” serves as a forum for bringing together experts from all sides of the issues important to Ingram’s readers. Through these discussions, we hope to further substantive debate on issues of the day, while also provid-ing our readers with a unique glimpse into the minds of the experts shaping those topics.

For our inaugural “Kansas City at the Crossroads” feature, we chose the timely and important topic of state funding for public education in the state of Kansas. Crossroads’ moderator, Nick Haines of KCPT, got right to point. He asked the panel if, indeed, there is a crisis in funding public education, as the Kansas Supreme Court actions would seem to indicate. If so, what is the nature of that crisis?

An Educational Crisis?

No sooner had Haines put forth the questions than Dwight Sutherland, attorney and former Republican candidate for the Kansas Senate, eagerly jumped in.

“We seem to be fixated on this notion that there’s this general systemic crisis. When in fact if you examine the problems they’re quite specific,” he said, pointing to topics such as educating children from low-income backgrounds and English-as-second-language students (ESL) as the main issues raising funding questions in Kansas. He added that these are finite, discrete problems that ought to be tackled one at a time. There is no need to rebuild the state’s educational and taxation systems.

While agreeing that funding for ESL and special education is indeed a priority, Tom Trigg, superintendent of the Blue Valley School District, took a broader view, characterizing the state Legislature’s challenge as one of examining the educational needs of every child in the state of Kansas and finding the right mechanism for meeting those needs.

The Kansas Association of School Boards’ Mark Tallman largely agreed. “The court decision,” said Tallman, “made more urgent the basic problem of providing the revenue and resources necessary to meet the ever-growing expectations that have been placed on public schools.”

Haines challenged the panel to explain just how increased funding affects the education a child receives. That is, what do taxpayers get for their money?

“What I’ve found out in my career, which has been long, is that money and the educational quality are linked together,” said Marjorie Kaplan, superintendent of the Shawnee Mission School District.

Sutherland immediately challenged the validity of a direct correlation between money and educational quality, saying, “We only have to look at Kansas City, Missouri to see how specious that notion is.”

Jack Cashill, executive editor of Ingram’s, introduced the specter of Judge Russell Clarke, who had attempted to run the Kansas City, Missouri School District from the bench for more than twenty years. Cashill mentioned that he had interviewed the judge soon after he retired. “Clarke admitted in that interview that he had failed; he had misconceived the problem. He thought that just by spending money he could raise minority test scores above 50 percent.”

 

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