A Kansas school superintendent writes about school finance

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A Kansas school superintendent explains school financing, but leaves out a large portion of the funds that flow to his district.

Steve Splichal, the superintendent of the Eudora Public School District, writes a blog in which he explained Kansas school financing. In one post he wrote this:

The general fund is largely made up from state funding called Base State Aid Per Pupil, or BSAPP. In 2008, the BSAPP reached it’s highest level of $4,400. As a result of funding cuts made during the Great Recession, the BSAPP was reduced dramatically. The Governor’s allotment (a cut of $42 in the BSAPP) lowered the BSAPP to $3,810. This is just about the same amount school district’s received in 2000. To put this in perspective, if the BSAPP had just maintained the rate of inflation, we would have a BSAPP of about $6,059.1

For the school year ending in 2014, which is the last before a change in the way state funding was accounted for, Eudora schools received $7,651 per student from the state.2 This is at a time the Eudora superintendent says base state aid is $3,810.

Kansas school spending per student, ratio of state aid per pupil to base state aid per pupil, 2014
Kansas school spending per student, ratio of state aid per pupil to base state aid per pupil, 2014
The superintendent’s article doesn’t mention this. Leaving out funding arising from weightings is a common mistake, or in some cases, a deliberate deception. The Kansas school finance formula used through the fiscal 2015 school year started with base state aid and added weightings to determine the aid a school district would receive. These weightings are substantial. In 2014, because of weightings, total state funding was 1.85 times base state aid.3

To his credit, the Eudora superintendent has a page explaining that the Kansas school finance formula — before the block grants — had weightings.4 But while lamenting the low level of base state aid, he never explained that his district received an additional 100.8 percent of base aid because of these weightings. Now the formula is gone, but the weightings are baked into the block grants that districts receive.

Let’s be charitable of the superintendent’s motives and attribute this to a forgetful and innocent oversight rather than deception. But I’m not going to forgive the superintendent for his errors in English usage.


Notes

  1. Splichal, Steve. *General Fund and BSAPP.* Eudora Rocks! A blog by Superintendent of Schools Steve Splichal. January 19, 2015. Available at eudorarocks.org/general-fund-and-bsapp/.
  2. Kansas State Department of Education. School finance data warehouse. Available at www.ksde.org/Portals/0/School%20Finance/data_warehouse/total_expenditures/d0491exp.pdf.
  3. Weeks, Bob. Kansas school weightings and effects on state aid. Voice for Liberty. Available at wichitaliberty.org/wichita-kansas-schools/kansas-school-weightings-and-effects-on-state-aid/.
  4. Splichal, Steve. Kansas School Finance Formula. Eudora Rocks! A blog by Superintendent of Schools Steve Splichal. January 19, 2015. Available at eudorarocks.org/kansas-school-finance-formula/.

Comments

One response to “A Kansas school superintendent writes about school finance”

  1. ictator

    Looking at KS state school funding without looking at all the state (we should also include local & federal) tax money being spent and only using base state aid is like looking at Bill Gates wealth and not considering his Microsoft stock.

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