The State of Kansas currently provides approximately $4.6 billion per year for public school K-12 funding.

The State Supreme Court has mandated an increase.

Now reports from consultants are laying out three different possible funding scenarios for improving student performance, with the least expensive costing $451 million more per year. the more ambitious option, boosting the graduation rate and vastly improving student scores on standardized tests, would result in a $2 billion increase.

State Representative Lonnie Clark, Junction CIty thought the report would be more conservative. But when it came right down to it, it looks likes it’s going to be a really substantial amount of increase to fund the schools. At this point in time with the state’s situation in revenue it’s going to be an uphill battle.”

Clark noted numerous mistakes were found by legislators in the consultants’ report so perhaps if there are mistakes in one part of the report it may not be as bad as it actually looks. Despite that, on the funding scenarios Clark noted that the report was pretty shocking to most of the people in the House Education Committee. “It was so high. We thought maybe there might be an increase, we were hoping there would be a little bit of a decrease just from the state’s situation side of it. But for these kind of numbers it was kind of a shock to everybody I think.”