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March 7, 2008

On a quiet Friday, House Education Committee heats up

The House Education Committee met this morning to hold hearings on two relatively non-controversial bills.

The interstate compact on educational opportunity for military children, HB 2714, would help streamline communications on behalf of military families as they move from state to state and district to district. Military children change schools as much as nine times from kindergarten to graduation; some change high schools twice. Delays in records transfers often make the transition even more difficult. The compact is supported nationally by the NEA.

The second bill was one passed by the Senate. Senate Bill 437 would allow for ROTC scholarships at the community college level. The Senate amended the bill to make sure the community college scholarships were done in conjunction with another ROTC institution and to provide scholarships for soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

After the hearings on these two bills the committee worked SB 421 the concurrent enrollment bill. This bill will allow high school sophomores to participate in concurrent enrollment. Current law allows juniors and seniors and gifted freshmen and sophomores. The committee passed the bill out. It will now go to the full House for consideration.

Discussion heated up when the committee opened HB 2777 for debate. HB 2777 would allow a second count date on February 20 if a district grew in student population after September 20. Things were moving along until it was pointed out that the bill had a $2.5 million fiscal note. Chairman Clay Aurand (R-Courtland) has made it clear all session that they would be working from a fiscally neutral position and any additional money would be taken up in an overall discussion of school finance. For this reason, Aurand halted discussion of the bill much to the distress of legislators from rapidly growing school districts. After some “warm” exchanges, the bill was set aside.

At the crack of dawn…the Education Budget

The House Education Budget Committee met at 7:00 a.m. yesterday to deliberate on the KSDE budget. Many of the 2009 budget requests including additional mentoring money, education leadership and discretionary grants were referred to omnibus with the vote falling along party lines. Representative Mike O’Neal (R-Hutchinson) amended a virtual school budget proposal to limit the age of students enrolled in virtual schools that the state will pay for to under 21 years. O’Neal’s amendment would also limit virtual school student aid to base state aid per pupil. The Senate Education Subcommittee on Virtual Schools would limit aid to 114% of BSAPP.

KPERS talk

The Senate Ways and Means Subcommittee on KPERS met yesterday to hear testimony on SB 662 and SB 663. SB 662 is a technical clean up bill addressing the changes in KPERS from last year’s SB 362 which changed the retirement benefits for teachers who begin their careers after July 1, 2009. SB 663 makes some changes to KPERS required by the IRS. SB 661 which would give current retirees a 3% COLA over the next three years was referred to the full Ways and Means Committee. The subcommittee began a wide ranging discussion of COLA’s and working after retirement. Several ideas surfaced during the discussion. These ideas will most probably be referred to the summer/fall interim Joint Committee on Pensions and Benefits.

After concern was raised by the subcommittee that the playing field was not level in the hiring of teachers after retirement, several ideas surfaced. A teacher who retires and goes back to work for their own district is limited to earning $20,000 per year before their KPERS benefits are impacted while the same teacher is able to go to work for another district for whatever they are able to negotiate making the playing field uneven between districts. One proposal would limit after retirement earnings for all teachers regardless of where they teach to $20,000.

Another concept discussed would allow current “pre-retired” teachers to “buy” their own COLA upon retirement by contributing money from their own IRA’s or 401K accounts.

These issues are more likely to be taken up by the interim committee than by this Legislature.

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