Much has been made of the potential for friction between rural and urban lawmakers over the implications of the legislative audit of school funding. But there is one other likely source of criticism of the audit’s proposed redistribution of wealth: Johnson County, which wouldn’t reap as much new funding as more urban Wichita, Topeka and Wyandotte County. Columnist Steve Rose asked what’s a key local question in The Johnson County Sun: “Who should fund districts where the goal of suitability is not enough, where excellent and world-class education is the goal?” It isn’t that Johnson Countians want other Kansans to subsidize their already exemplary schools, but that they want no more limits on how much more local money they can pump into those schools. It’s a valid question.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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22 Comments
Did any legislator see “Stupid in America”?
One question might be ask is, why is more money the solution?
Joe, I have no argument with you about throwing money at any problem, much less something as important as education.
But…Rita Mae Brown tells a good story that applies here. She says you never have to put a lid on a bucket of live crabs because when one crab tries to crawl out of the bucket, the other crabs will reach up and pull them back down.
If JoCo wants a world class education system, and they are willing to tax themselves, why should we care? Because they might make the rest of the state look bad?
I understand it opens the door to local and not state funding of education, and given the BOE, that is no longer just an idle threat. But if a community wants better for its residents, why do we want to drag them down in the bucket with the cheap skates?
This touches on the immigrant tuition bill also. Check out this link about how community prosperity correlates with education. Maybe that is why our economy sucks in Ks?
Oops, sorry forgot the link.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities
Years ago the court ruled the Kansas school funding at that time was unconstitutional because that systym was unfair because of underfunding the low income districts.QUESTION:Why is allowing LOBs (Local Option Budjets)s along with the present system any more fair then the original system?This is a question that has been bugging me for some time. Can someone tell me what I am missing?
A guy from up north seems to like the idea of crabs pulling the escaping crab back into the bucket. The question is, why don’t the other crabswant to follow the lead of the first? Maybe they are actually trying to, but they are near-sighted, so in hooking themselves to follow, they prevent the smart crab from leading.
Good education is really expensive. But the return is outstanding. It’s not an expense, it’s an investment. In young people. In a society’s FUTURE.
If JoCo invests in her young people, it will produce wise leaders for Kansas. Some Kansans resent this idea. They would rather have all Kansans be ill-educated, so that Kansas’s leadership wll be people who reside in places like Chicago and Washington. Nevermind that Chicago moguls and Washington pols don’t give a whit about Kansas or Kansans, because they don’t live here. Oklahoma senator and former governor David Boren gave up a multimillion lobbyist opportunity to preside over the University of Oklahoma. Where’s Bob Dole? Why isn’t he back home, helping Kansans? What are the odds that Missouri-native Todd Tiarht is going to settle in Goddard when he leaves Congress? Who provides the lion’s share of his campaign money? Why do non-Kansans pay for his campaigns?
Or maybe we SHOULD mind this situation. Because if we Kansans don’t support authentic leadership for Kansas and Kansans, nobody else will do it for us.
What percentage of our Kansas leaders are from Kansas and what percentage of High School grads even live in Kansas?I think If you ckeck you will find the percentage of grads from Kansas move to other states. Kansas benefits very little from all the tax money we pay for their education.
A guy,Maybe the question we should ask is, why would young people, grads, want to stay in Kansas? Our pols brag about new jobs in one breath, but under their breath, they admit that it’s not good paying jobs. There are a lot of jobs to be had in Wichita, but minus recent aircraft hiring, they don’t pay well. Why stay here when you can get a job that pays a living wage elsewhere?I think we agree that throwing money at education doesn’t solve the problem. But starving the system doesn’t help, either. What’s your suggestion?
But people correlate that companies go where good schools are. But when did K-12 did anything to improve the economy.
What I see is the unversities is what brough the jobs in. We have been lacking quite a bit in that area, especially technical college. At the expense of K-12, we neglect higher learning and make the students pick up the bill for higher tuition.
Remember! They showed the KC school district that had world class facilities and even used taxi cabs to bring kids to school for intergration purposes, yet that didn’t do anything.
K-12 will always be K-12, good or bad test scores. Companies do not move to areas where there are supposed good public schools. They go where the Universities and research are.
Wichita doesn’t need more low-skilled production workers, they need skilled and knowledgeable human capital. Engineeres and business majors.
Throwing money at the system doesn’t solve it either.This country was built on one school houses with budgets the tax payers would give them.Why do they have to have 2 administrators for every 10 stundnts?When a school building is 30 years they think it needs to be replaced. While over in europe, some of their school buildings are over a 100 years and still being used.That doesn’t say much for quality of our buildings.
Anytime we need engineers in this country we have to go out of the country to hire them. Thats because all the engineering collages teach and encurage their students to be managers so just as soon as they get their Engineering licence, they go into management. WHAT A WASTE !
A guy,I’ve been to Europe. Their old buildings aren’t that great. Trust me. 2 administrators for every 10 students? Are you sure of your numbers?
A guy from up north doesn’t have it quite right. We have to import engineers, as well as mathematicians and scientists not because all our engineers go into managment, but because America isn’t producing enough engineers–or mathematicians or scientists, some of whom teach engineering students. Math and science are deemed “too hard” by our students. Poor math and science instruction in our K-12 schools explains why.
These are HARD SUBJECTS TO LEARN. LEARNING requires TIME. Give youngsters three hours of math per day, and two hours of science, in classes taught by people who understand math and science, and you’ll see a lot more young people gravitate to engineering, math and science in college.
BTW, this would take some money. You can’t hire math and science-knowledgeable people for the same salaries as you pay language arts and social studies people in an economy that rewards math- and science-knowledgeable people at premium rates. So you have to overcome teachers union obstructionism, which is posited on the argument that only time of service matters, not teaching skills, in salary-setting. You have to pay for laboratory facilities and materials, which cost a lot more than regular classrooms and learning materials.
I may have overlooked it but I still haven’t seen an answer to my original question – - -
Why is allowing LOBs (Local Option Budjets)s along with the present system any more fair then the original system?
The legislators seem to be thumbing their noses at the court and the court seems to be doing nothing about it.
guy makes a really good point.
It’s a tough call for the courts to make.
What is a “suitable education”? Originally, mass public education was created to mold the children of peasants into a tractable industrial workforce. The idea was to create a “human resource” whose average individual productivity was low, but whose mass production was high–high enough to fabulously enrich the industrial economy lords.
Public education is a 19th century invention that was created to promote a new-garb form of feudalism.
Wichita’s schools are dutifully adhering to this. This is why public school students here cannot take Advanced Placement Calculus BC, Physics C or English Literature and Composition. It is why a proposal to build a math and science academy for gifted students was rejected by the USD 259 superintendent and BOE. It is why Wichita’s aviation workers are consigned to air-bus body fabrication and flying-limo construction, doing jobs that will be transfered to China within the next 20 years. And Wichita’s leaders’ response is, “Let’s build a bread and circuses arena.”
It is as fair for JoCo citizens to not only tax themselves to pay a premium price for JoCo’s young people to receive a college-preparatory education, and also subsidize Wichita children’s public education, as it is for Wichita citizens to decide that McJobs, or VoTech school or a JC degree, or a WSU degree at age 28 is what they want for Wichita children who go to public schools.
The courts could rule that LOB funding is unconstitutional. The result would be a new crop of private schools in JoCo, and diminished support for public education. Perhaps it might trigger increased pressure for private-education vouchers. Maybe these developments would be good for Kansas. Or perhaps not. But what we can be sure of is that reducing JoCo schools to Wichita schools’ quality would not benefit this state. And this is what the courts will ultimately have to tackle.
A final comment on fairness. Kansas has to import engineers, information technologists and doctors, because it does not devote sufficient resources to producing enough of these professionals to meet the state’s needs. Is it fair to these professionals that their own children cannot get the same level of education that the parents received elsewhere? Other states invest in young people, and Kansas uses their knowledge and skills as adults, but does not contribute to the the professional-production process. This is emblematic of a colonial-satellite mindset.
If some communities wish to educate their children for the 21st century’s American and global economy, and they are willing to pay higher education costs to achieve this goal, is it fair for other communities that do not understand the nature of this economy, and are unwilling to transform their own schools to prepare children for it, to hold the enlightened communities back, for example by insisting that funding be the same for all schools?
Is it rational for special ed to be given extraordinary funding, but to not provide extraordinary funding for gifted students’ education? Public schools have long mismanaged young academic talent–grossly mal-cultivated it–by encouraging really bright kids to do ordinary academic routines faster and with fewer errors than average kids, when these gifted students actually need to study subjects and do work assignments that cause their minds to struggle–to think deeply, complexly and creatively. Why is this type of education called for? Because society has very complex problems to solve. Kansas schools by and large do not produce difficult-problem solvers. It’s a pretty safe bet that Wichita and rural schools are not ever going to take the lead in addressing this issue. But somebody has to.
If JoCo wants to run education programs that do produce difficult-problem solvers, it’s not only fair, it is necessary for other Kansans to enjoy a better future. Well-educated professionals teach other people, making the latter more productive. They enable the businesses they own or are employed by to enter new markets, and expand, thus creating more revenues for Kansas and more jobs for Kansans.
At a recent economic outlook conference at WSU, it was demonstrated that Kansans’ average productivity is not only lower than the national average, but lower than the Great Plains average, as measured by Gross State Product divided by the working population size. Johnson County substantially exceeds national and regional averages. Its taxpayers are net contributors to our state-government coffers, paying more money than they receive from Topeka, and the surplus allocated to other counties.
Wichitans like to spend local tax revenues on projects, such as $67 million for a beautiful riverfront Exploration Place that’s a lousy science and technology education center. A superb education center could have been built for less than $30 million. It’s not the architectural design that matters, it’s the stuff you put in it for kids to play with and learn from, that makes them want to come back again and again, but this was insufficiently appreciated.
We’re going to spend probably upwards of $200 million for a new arena. It’s not JoCo citizens’ right to decide what Wichita’s public dollars should be spent on. If Wichitans want to spend money on an arena rather than education, this is our right. But it isn’t our right to prevent JoCo citizens from allocating their public funds to education, if JoCo citizens prefer this to building a new arena for themselves.
Late to the thread, I dont even know where to start here. I asked the question several days back. Where are the studies that tell if Kansans leave the state after they are educated? We dont do any, because we dont want to know the answer. Kansas’ biggest export used to be educated people. Is that still true? If so, I dont think that is the fault of education. I think that is a lack of opportunity and possibility to live into for the future.
You know the joke about two guys commenting on all the jobs created in Kansas last year? One says to the other “yeah, I know about all those new Kansas jobs. I have two of them to make ends meet.”
As for the fairness of what JoCo wants to do, I cant answer that question. I dont think it is a matter of fairness, it is a matter of survival in a global economy that requires a world class workforce. Dont you think they get tired of playing “hit the ball, drag the state, hit the ball, drag the state, etc.”?
The fairness issue is in play out here regarding local taxation. Hays passed a sales tax increase last year specifically on the premise that all those out of town shoppers that come to Hays should pay part of the tax burden of maintaining the city. It was sold to the voters that they could shift a significant portion of their property tax burden to all those pesky out of town shoppers who contribute nothing to the community. (BIG eye roll here) It passed overwhelmingly.
So there is precident in Kansas for shifting local taxes to out of town shoppers. As if all those dollars we spend in their community are not enough, they need us to pay their property taxes too.
I wonder if they have a plan for how Hays will survive when all the rest of us are gone. How much shopping traffic and medical care will be purchased by people traveling from east to west? That would be like water flowing from east to west too.
farmgirl
When out of town shoppers come to town they apply ware and tare on the streets, add to the traffic, cause the city to add more law inforcement, use the public facilities, parks, etc, etc, etc.So why sholdn’t they share in keeping up the host city?
Guy, we pay the people who pay the taxes. We buy at the local store, and they take part of the money we spend and pay their taxes. But city leaders cant get their own people to pay enough taxes, so they levy a tax on people who cant vote. I also fail to see why I should support home ownership in Hays. It isnt all about businesses.
We have a full scale boycott going out here against Hays and Russell, mostly because of water issues, but also because of the sales tax. Lots of us are driving to Salina to do the shopping we cant do at home. How is that working for Hays? Sales tax collections are up, but taxable sales are down.
Farmgirl
Driving a 100 miles out of your way on a principal may be justified on some things but with the price of gas today, I would have to be very upset before I would pay the gouging oil companies that much (just on principal.
I know I am guilty of going against my principals by shopping at Wal-Mart knowing all the time, one of these days they will have run all the other business’ out of business – THEN WATCH PRICES SKYROCKET !
LOL Guy, we take our water issues pretty seriously out here. I am afraid you aint seen nothin’ yet!
Guy,If I may:I read your post on out of town shoppers causing wear and tear on the streets, adding to congestion, etc. They are paying city taxes when they shop in Salina, pay city taxes when they buy gas and eat at a restaurant. Coming from a distant town and doing their shopping in Salina, or any other city, is a boon to that city. It’s a win/win situation.
Joplin, where I live, has a population of around 45,000 people. It is estimated that around a quarter of a million cars drive down Rangeline every day. We have every fast food outlet you can think of (though not enough quality restaurants . . . dang it) that you can’t go 1 mile without running into one. It causes congestion, but is good for the city economy.
The taxes garnered from the daily traffic go to the schools, and that is certainly a good thing. But that does make the question of this blog a good one: Should some of that tax money be spread around to other, less traveled school districts? I think it should. I also think that well off districts shouldn’t be able to stuff the coffers of their school districts in order to attract the best teachers and staff. Their called public schools for a reason. If a county has unlimited $’s to build the best school district, then some of that money should be reapplied by the state to all school districts. If teacher wages are consistent throughout the state, then teachers and staff are going to move to districts that suit them living wise.
Which leaves out much of the state, in my opinion. Have you ever washed your glasses in McPherson’s water? Rinse them out with swimming pool acid afterwards. Like ksfarmgrrl. Don’t get me started on water issues.