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The Senate debated and passed its budget bill early Thursday evening, signaling that the end of the 2023 Kansas Legislative Session is nearing. As important deadlines loom, committees were busy hearing and working bills this week – many with three to four hearings a day. Lawmakers have one more week to complete their work before March 24th, when all non-exempt committees finish meeting for the year. Lawmakers will then debate bills the week of March 27th and return the following week for conference committee work with a First Adjournment (end of regular session) date of April 6th.
Veto session will begin Wednesday, April 26th.
Emotions heat up in the statehouse!
Despite the cool temps outside, the debate on education savings account (ESA) legislation and budget bills was heated this week.
Lawmakers in the House advanced the ESA bill, House Substitute for SB 83, on Tuesday after several hours of debate.
House Substitute for SB 83 includes education savings account funding that follows students, roughly $5,100 per year in state base aid, available through an education savings account families can use for any private school. All K-12 public students eligible for free or reduced lunches with low academic performance can apply for the funding. Current private school students will gradually have access based on poverty levels ranging from 300-600% of the federal poverty level. In addition to the savings accounts, members amended the bill to include special education funding ($72M) and a requirement to utilize at least half of $174M in Gannon funding in 2024 for teacher salary increases (approximately $2K annually for all teachers).
Proponents of the bill argue that it is the best tool we can give less affluent students to navigate an education that is best suited for individuals, not a system. Republican state Representative Kristey Williams, R-Augusta who chairs the K-12 Education Budget Committee and bill sponsor, stated, "ESAs are for all kinds of families, for all kinds of students with all kinds of needs and with all kinds of learning styles and preferences." She added, "ESAs are flexible. They're spending accounts that invite parents back into the driver's seat of making educational choices for the children they know best."
Another proponent, Republican state Representative Brenda Landwehr, vice chair of the K-12 Education Budget Committee, said opponents of the bill were more interested in defending an educational system than advocating for children's best interests. "There's a lot of talk about kids, but when push comes to shove, that's not who we're supporting today," Landwehr said. "We're talking about supporting a system."
Opponents of the bill believe it will dilute public education and drive school closures. Democrat state Representative Mari-Lynn Poskin, Leawood said, "We are setting up a secondary private education system that we are prohibited from supervising that have no performance measures, Not even one."
Democratic state Representative Valdenia Winn of Kansas City said, "You may not be here to kill public schools, but the results will be just that." Winn made this comment after the debate over the financial impact student use of ESAs will have on public schools.
The fiscal analysis indicated that for every 1% of the state's 484,000 public school students participating in the program, or 4,840 students, about $24.6 million would be transferred out of the state budget to pay for private-school tuition. Representative Kristey Williams estimates the bill costs about $58 million annually.
The bill passed the House 64-61 to advance to the full Senate on Thursday.
The Kansas Reflector covered the all drama.
Here are some excerpts featured in the article:
Democrat Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, Lenexa, kicked off a fury of debate on Thursday with a motion to call a vote on Senate Bill 83. As reported by the Lawrence Times, Sykes pressed her case by pointing to "Rule 3B," which she said provided leverage to compel a snap vote in the Senate on the education bill.
"I do think we should vote," she said. "I do think this bill was gutted and significantly altered from the way it came out of this chamber."
Senate President Ty Masterson, an R-Andover, disagreed and urged his colleagues to steer the bill into a House-Senate conference committee. His substitute motion would place the bill in the hands of six Senate and House negotiators. If the bi-partisan three-senator, three-representative negotiating committee reaches a compromise, lawmakers can vote on the deal without an opportunity for amendment.
"I'm in support of this," said Senator Renee Erickson, R-Wichita. "A bill of this magnitude, the importance of this subject matter, we need more time to look at it through the conference process."
Senator Jeff Longbine, R-Emporia, said he was perplexed by the conference-committee approach outlined by Masterson that apparently would bypass the Senate's education committee. He suggested the Senate committee, with its subject-matter expertise, ought to evaluate details of the voucher-like initiative and consider other parts of the K-12 package. "If this bill is of such magnitude, why is the Senate Education Committee not taking a look at it?" Longbine said.
Senator Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg and chairwoman of the Senate Education committee, revealed she requested legislative staff provide a comparative analysis of the Senate's original Senate Bill 83, which offered low-income scholarships and tax credits to help students enroll in private schools, and the revamped Senate Bill 83 adopted by the House. For example, Baumgardner said, the Legislature didn't have a solid grasp on the actual cost to taxpayers of the House's bill. "We want to make sure we have as much data as possible," Baumgardner said. "We make decisions based on real data, not just assumptions."
After a long and heated debate on rules and parliamentary procedure, the bill was eventually dropped into a conference committee, with more to come next week.
Read the entire statehouse report.
See all education bills we are tracking.
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