It’s a concern at this point.
Will a school finance block grant bill that locks in funding for school districts for two years be implemented? If USD 475 received less or no federal miltitary impact aid funding during that time could the school district still have to turn over funds to the State as they do now under impact aid requirements in Kansas?
Those are unanswered questions at this point, but school district officials are having to take that into account in their future financial planning.
Superintendent Dr. Corbin Witt reported on Saturday that the federal government caught up on back impact aid payments owed this year. “We got more money this year than we normally have received. “The state gets 70 percent of that money and the district keeps the remaining 30 percent to educate military impacted students.
When the state took 70 percent of those funds this year ( approximately $10.4 million out of $15.9 million received by the school district ) they informed USD 475 that’s the total they’re locking in for the next two years.
Witt said, “The state, though, since they’ve locked it in has said that they’re taking that no matter what. So if your impact aid goes back to what it normally has done ( in the $12.5 to $13.1 million range ) then we’re no longer taking 70 percent, we’re taking 85 or 90 percent.” Witt added, “If we get a huge cut and we get less than $10 million, they’re still going to take ten million. So essentially our district would have to pay the state because we didn’t get impact aid funds.”
Witt noted the District has to be proactive and have plans in place for how they would would deal with that, “and just pray that cooler heads will prevail, and there will be something that comes out that helps us to avoid that.”
It is possible the school block grant funding plan will not be implemented at all , if it is overruled in court. There is a May 7 court hearing in Shawnee County dealing with the block grant system. A ruling is expected to come out later at a later date.
The block grant system was proposed for two years, while the current Kansas school finance formula is being rewritten.