Kansas Senate, House adding new chapters to state law on K-12 public education policy

TOPEKA — The Kansas Senate found compromise on legislation Tuesday setting ground rules for student enrollment counts tied to state appropriations that could serve interests of growing public school districts and support school districts with declining populations.

Senators offered broad support — the vote was 33-6 — for a plan permitting districts to choose between reporting the current school year’s enrollment for budget purposes or using average enrollment from the past two years. The logic was districts taking in more students would prefer up-to-date enrollment figures so they would be compensated for new students, while districts with downward enrollment trends would benefit from the two-year average approach.

The deal, if also endorsed by the Kansas House and Gov. Laura Kelly, would only allow the two-year average option during the 2024-2025 school year. The state’s cost of providing this softer glide path for urban and rural districts with declining enrollments would be about $4.6 million.

“This is critically important for schools with declining enrollment because it allows them to gradually adjust to a decrease in enrollments without suffering significant and abrupt loss in funding,” said Sen. Elaine Bowers, a Concordia Republican who also said most school districts within her Senate district were losing students.

When debate started on Senate Bill 386, it would have mandated school districts calculate state revenue based on enrollment in either the current or preceding school year. As it stands now, the state would move to that enrollment and budget method in the 2025-2026 academic year.

Sen. Mary Ware, D-Wichita, said the original version of the legislation would have put the state’s largest school district in a financial bind. She said the Wichita school district had already negotiated two-year agreements with teachers and support staff based on the current school finance formula tied to enrollment.

However, Sen. Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg, said the state’s special treatment of declining-enrollment districts would lead to a reckoning. She said Kansas had 10 districts with fewer than 100 students each, and one district with less than 20 students. “This is not an issue that is going to go away,” she said.

The original version and amended version of SB 386 represented a change from current law. Existing statute required school districts and the Kansas State Department of Education to determine state aid based on enrollment counts from the previous year. However, an exception allowing a district experiencing a decrease in enrollment between the second-preceding school year and the preceding school year to set funding based on headcounts in the second-preceding year.

School health care

Rep. Ron Bryce, R-Coffeyville, said it was time the Legislature required parental consent for children in schools to receive health care services.

The House delivered tentative approval for Senate Bill 287, which included a requirement professional licensing agencies sanction health providers who violated the statute. On Tuesday, the bill was approved by the House on a vote of 85-37. The Senate hasn’t voted on the legislation proposed by Rep. Susan Estes, R-Wichita.

Many school districts offer standard consent forms to parents or guardians at the outset of the school year, but the bill would mandate permission for dispensing prescription or nonprescription drugs, administering a diagnostic test with the minor’s body fluid or conducting ongoing behavioral health treatment to anyone under 18.

“The bill basically requires parents consent to treat a child in a school facility,” Bryce said during House floor debate on the bill. “Just who’s children are they anyway?”

Bryce, a physician licensed to practice medicine in Texas but not in Kansas, has been a proponent of laws blocking health professionals from advocating for gender-affirming care of minors. He said such transgender care was comparable to treating depression by performing a lobotomy.

Opposition to the bill emerged from the Kansas Board of Nursing, Kansas Chapter of the American Academy of pediatrics, Kansas Mental Health Coalition, Kansas School Nurses Association, Equality Kansas, Kansas Academy of Family Physicians, Kansas Association of School Boards and others.

“This is government overreach,” said Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Democrat from Kansas City, Kansas. “I’m especially concerned for the medical providers that are in the schools. They’re all going to be very reluctant to do anything because of the high risk of losing their license.”

Rep. Nikki McDonald, D-Olathe, said the bill’s text was overly broad and could be detrimental to children when parents couldn’t be located to provide consent.

Exceptions in the bill wouldn’t extend the parental mandate to school-based health screenings required by law, health education of a minor or mental health interventions for someone in crisis.

School board mandates

Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute think tank in Wichita, initiated consideration of Senate Bill 427, which outlined a series of requirements for how locally elected school boards handled regular meetings. He asserted board policies adopted long ago blocked conversations on K-12 public policy and inhibited parental involvement in education issues.

“A board member in USD 489 Hays has repeatedly tried to have a board discussion and vote on a controversial issue dealing with boys and girls sharing restroom facilities,” Trabert said. “Many community members have expressed concerns, but the board member cannot get the issue on the agenda.”

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 13-24 to spike the bill denounced by the Kansas Association of School Boards, which argued it could violate constitutional rights of people serving on local school boards.

The legislation would have required school board members to have their names and emails published on state and school district websites. If the bill was signed into law, any member of a local school board could add discussion items to the agenda and ask questions of the public attending meetings. Each school board would have been required to schedule a public comment portion of each meeting to enable citizens to speak to board members on any subject.

State law would have been amended to allow tax dollars to be spent on annual dues for any not-for-profit organization providing “guidance, resources and other services to member school districts.” School board members would be compelled, by law, be granted access to district property during school hours or during events conducted at the schools.

“Some folks are wondering why we are doing this,” said Baumgardner, the Louisburg Republican. “It’s because we have 286 school districts … and not all of them operate the same.”

Sen. Jeff Pittman, D-Leavenworth, said the bill stepped into issues best left to local school board members elected to serve their constituents. He said the Senate bill set the stage for unnecessary conflict at school board meetings, which could independently implement provisions in the bill. He was perplexed with the idea of a single board member or member of the public taking over a school board meeting. Even the Senate operated with standard procedural rules established by the Senate itself, he said.

“It’s a brazen overreach on local control, on our duly elected school boards,” said Pittman, who blamed creation of the legislation on rogue school board members hunting for evidence of conspiracy and false narratives. “Brought by a few disgruntled school board members to this body.”

The foster care kids

The Senate also granted unanimous approval Tuesday to legislation that would declare all public school students in the foster care system eligible for supplemental at-risk services. The vote was 40-0.

Participation in the state’s foster care system would become the 12th criteria for identifying students as at-risk of academic challenges. Others include homelessness, dyslexia, English language deficiency, failure to advance to the next grade level, not reading at grade level and high rate of absences.

“It heightens the need when the foster child is put into a new school building or a new school, for them to be identified as a foster child,” said Baumgardner, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, said it was disappointing the bill didn’t also require appropriation of state funding to help school districts provide at-risk services to foster children.

“I would hope that if these students were counted then, in fact, there would be an increase in the at-risk funding for that student,” Francisco said.