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March 18, 2008

House Ed grinds up time debating KAMS, finally passes bill out

The House Education Committee convened with every intention of working four bills this morning but wound up dispatching of only one, the Kansas Academy of Math and Science funding bill, SB 404.

In an earlier meeting, the committee had amended the bill so that when a student went to KAMS, his/her home district would send base state aid, any high or low enrollment weighting, any at-risk funding, and LOB generated funds. Under the Senate bill, they would send only BSAPP.

Rep. Pat Colloton tried to amend the bill by leaving LOB funds in the home district but her amendment failed on a vote of 7 – 14. Another motion by Rep. Bill Otto would have prohibited any additional state funding for KAMS. His motion failed as well.

The only additional amendment to pass was one by Rep. Colloton that would eliminate non-residents or international students from attending KAMS. Colloton argued that it was better for KAMS to focus on talented Kansans with the intent of encouraging them to stay in Kansas. The amendment passed on a vote of 12 – 9.

After much discussion – and at times it looked like the whole bill might go down – the amended bill was passed out of committee and now goes to the full House.

Left for a later debate were SB 401 dealing with funding for students in psychiatric residential treatment facilities, SB 470 fixing an error in the school safety and security act, and HR 6012, a resolution dealing with dyslexia.

Update on Subcommittees

The Subcommittee on post disaster funding gave a report to the full House Ed Committee this morning. They are recommending amending the Emporia economic disaster bill, HB 2776, into the Senate’s Greensburg and Southeast Kansas flooding disaster bill, SB 426.

The Subcommittee on alternative certification has crafted a resolution calling on the State Department of Education, the Kansas Board of Regents, and public and private teacher preparation programs to take actions to more effectively use the flexibility granted under State Board regulations.

Senate Ways and Means talks KPERS

The Senate Ways and Means Committee took the recommendations of their KPERS subcommittee.

It doesn’t look like much will happen on the KPERS front this year with the subcommittee recommending two interim studies for 2008 with reports made to the 2009 legislature:

1. Review the concept of an employee self-funded COLA as an alternative to one paid by the state and local funds.
2. Review the issue of working after retirement (the phrase doesn’t make sense to me) as it pertains to school districts and the impact that current laws have on the problem of retaining and recruiting teachers and administrators.

Senate Education Committee deals with consolidation, linear transition

Consolidation ala Senate

The Senate Education Committee amended the one House Education bill to survive the first half of the session and passed it out for consideration by the full Senate.

The bill, HB 2734, as passed by the House would provide incentives for school districts to consolidate sooner rather than later. As it came to the Senate, the bill provided five years of combined budgets for districts that each had more than 200 students prior to consolidation, four years if each district had between 150 and 200 students, and only two years if one of the districts had fewer than 150 students. Under current law, districts that consolidate get three years of combined budget authority.

Senators thought that the House version would leave districts with less than 150 students high and dry because under the bill if just one of the districts planning to consolidate had fewer than 150 students, they would get only two years of help. No larger district would be willing to consolidate with a very small district. The committee amended the bill to provide five years of combined budget authority for consolidations involving districts of any size. 

High density at-risk 

The Education Committee voted to amend SB 623 to include a new approach to protecting districts from losing high density at-risk funding. There have been numerous proposals to move to a linear transition for this currently stair-stepped weighting but all have failed because they created winners and losers in their implementation.

This proposal would retain the stair-step at 40% poverty and 50% poverty but would adopt a provision similar to declining enrollment weighting under which a district that fell below the appropriate threshold due to a decline in the percentage of students in poverty could use the current year, prior year or three-year average of free lunch enrollment to qualify for the weighting. This would ease the transition.

This bill was then amended into HB 2734 and the combined bill was passed out of committee to be considered by the full Senate.

Cyberbullying

The Senate Education Committee also voted to recommend HB 2758 which add "cyberbullying" to the policies against bullying school districts must adopt. 

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