Board questions group's fee
By GAYLE WEBER
With both Hays USD 489 Board of Education President Karie Younger and Vice President Sharon Befort absent from Monday's meeting, action related to setting the district's legislative priorities for next year was tabled until Oct. 20.
Specifically, board members questioned the district's involvement in Schools for Fair Funding, a lobbyist organization for some of the state's larger districts. The board also voted to table paying the membership dues for the group until a full board could be present.
"If we're the smallest school in there, there's probably very few opportunities that we're going to get to go our way," board member Greg Schwartz said. "If we can continue being a member and not pay the fees, I'm all for it."
Schwartz said he only would want to be a member of either SFFF or Kansas Association of School Boards, which lobbies for public education in general. USD 489 already is a member of KASB.
Superintendent Fred Kaufman said that while he supported the district as members of KASB, he also sees a need to maintain membership with SFFF, for which he is the president.
"We need somebody to keep the particular needs of the Hays school district in mind, and they are not the same as every other districts," Kaufman said. "It's not a matter of us doing this alone. It's a matter of us doing this with 10 or 11 districts -- like Great Bend, Dodge City."
Acting board president Alan Moore said he would continue to support membership in Schools for Fair Funding, as did board member Rich Kraemer.
"I think we would get a better bang for our buck in uniting with 10 or 12 districts as opposed to going down there and just asking for one district," Kraemer said.
When the board took action on paying the district's bills, board member Judy Nixon, supported by Schwartz, said she wanted to pay everything but the SFFF membership fees of $5,616 and expenses incurred by both Kaufman and Richard Cain, assistant superintendent of finance, while participating in SFFF meetings. She said she would support paying those bills at the next meeting if the board decided to maintain membership in the group.
Nixon's motion passed 3-2, with Kraemer and Moore dissenting. However, Cain said late fees could be incurred on the travel expenses to SFFF meetings.
Another motion was made and passed to pay everything but the membership dues so no late fees would be assessed to the district.
The board also voted to table paying for AccuWeather, which provides up-to-date weather information across the state.
Kaufman discussed the district's legislative priorities he would submit for the upcoming session.
One of the most important decisions to be made this year in the Legislature is in regards to special-education funding. Kaufman said there is legislation being talked about that would fund districts based on the total number of students in the district, not the number of special-education students.
"The district that would be hurt would be the one that doesn't have a lot of students, comparatively speaking, and a lot of special ed students. Unfortunately, that's us," Kaufman said.
He said the district could stand to lose between $600,000 and $900,000 if the state decides to go with census-based funding for special education.
"It's a very simple way to distribute the funds, but it does not make any provision at all for districts with large numbers of special-ed children," Kaufman said. "There's no requirement that the funds be spent on special ed, and that could really work to the detriment of special-education students."
He said the district also would suffer because the legislation would not cover private school children receiving special-education services from USD 489.
"A small change in wording there could cost us a considerable number of dollars," he said.
To go along with special education, Kaufman said the state needs to fund all-day kindergarten.
"We've had all-day kindergarten for 15 years and received half-day funding," Kaufman said. "Almost 50 percent of the kindergarten students in Kansas are in all-day kindergarten with no funding to provide for it."
Other priorities include increasing the base budget per pupil, which would boost teacher's salaries; changing correlation weighting, which would balance large and small school funding; increasing the maximum local option budgets; eliminating vocational weighting; addressing the problem of commercial profit-making in virtual education; and insuring the solvency of KPERS.
The board will discuss the legislative priorities more in-depth at its next meeting.