Good morning, reflector listeners. I'm Reporter Rachael meero. And today's topic will be K through 12 education in the state. I'm here today with Lea floater, Assistant Executive Director of Advocacy with the Kansas Association of School Boards. And Marcus balsall, director of communications with the Kansas National Education Association. Heidi, both of you, and thank you both for taking the time to be here. So we're gonna focus on recent legislation heard in the K, I was K through 12 education budget committee. On Monday, they had a hearing for House Bill 2018, which would become the sunflower education Equity Act, if passed, the bill would establish an education savings fund, along with the 10 member board to oversee operations. Now, I've heard a lot of critics of this legislation. Would you care to speak to that? We'll start with Leah.
Yeah, this bill is particularly problematic. I mean, we've seen various forms of voucher bills over the past few years in the state legislature. This is an education savings account, which is a type of voucher, which, as you noted, Rachel, is it would give the, it would give parents a base state aid of about $5,000 to set up an account to pay for educational expenses, you know, sounds kind of benign on the on the surface, but this bill would allow people to use those education savings accounts, at any school that has been set up by any random person in Kansas on a street corner, in a shopping mall, in their basement. You know, the schools would be completely unregulated by the Department of Education, or by Department of Children and Families, you know, there would be no oversight over the schools. And so it's just this is just particularly egregious KSB opposes any kind of vouchers that funnel public funds away from public schools and to private schools or other schools that don't accept all students. And so we always oppose these types of bills. But this bill is particularly egregious.
Yeah, I think, from our organization's perspective, we have the same sentiment, you know, it's really simple. When you're moving public dollars, and you're citing them siphoning those dollars away from public schools to private schools. You're intentionally weakening, you know, the public school. And, and the simple fact is, there's not a lot of tolerance for vouchers in Kansas or in America. So we have to do some creative messaging, if we're trying to push a voucher bills through, we have to call them the sunflower opportunity, equity, you know, whatever, whatever. And that's, that's a very intentional messaging tactic, to, to make things like this more palatable. And I think it says everything that, you know, the first go around when any of this has been heard, you know, quickly, the chairs of these committees are, are even chastising conferees for even using the term voucher. But, you know, voucher is kind of an all encompassing term, in that, you know, whenever you're whenever you're moving those those public dollars to unregulated, unaccountable often for profit, private entities that don't have any obligation to take every kind of student with every kind of need, like we do in public schools. That's a problem for everybody. And I think, you know, the public recognizes that by and large. And
what I thought was interesting, too, is that a lot of the language in the bill is saying parents rights, parental authority. I mean, this seems like rhetoric that's been around for a while. What are your thoughts on that?
Again, I think kind of tacking on to what Marcus said, they know that you know, that the voucher thing is, is not popular. And so to cast it as a parent's right over their child is another tactic. You know, Kansas parents have many, many, many legal rights over their children, you know, children are minors until they turn 18. That means their parent or guardian has legal rights over their education over everything they do. And so it's just it's a somewhat cynical ploy to try to make a voucher seem more palatable, I think.
And then interesting to you that I mean, I feel like some of the people going up there to speak with saying that this is an attack on public schools across the state. I mean, are you seeing that as as part of like a concerted effort or?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm, I think we saw it on the national level during the national elections that culminated in November. We saw it also, at the state level in gubernatorial election, you know, there was some, some rhetoric around parents rights and some things like that, that was designed to stir up animosity against public education. And so and I'm also in contact with colleagues in the state legislatures in Michigan. In Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and we trade a lot of information. And this is just this is almost chapter and verse from the process that some of those those states have gone through, they've just been, they've been dealing with it longer. And they they have seen the absolute hollowing out of public schools, kids are forced to go to a, you know, a for profit school, because their local public neighborhood school has been so decimated its funding and other resources that the parents are forced to send them to a different school where their needs aren't met, and then they you know, and then they, within a couple of months, they have to pull the kid out, and try to find another place for them to get an appropriate education. And you know, who does that hurt, it hurts the kids, you know, it hurts the kids?
Well, and it's simply the chosen ones, meaning the school is the ones that get the choice of who to choose to come to their school. So it's a case of the chosen ones. And then those that are that are kind of left in, in the neighborhood schools that have been undercut, underfunded, you know, all of those kinds of things. You know, if if, first of all, let's take a step back, I don't think either of our organizations or educators, by and large, are opposed to private schools that they're there. There are many private schools that do a wonderful job. And they have certain, you know, charters and things that they, you know, their missions that they that they follow. We don't we don't oppose any of that. What we oppose is weakening of public schools, weakening of opportunity for for students in Kansas, throughout Kansas, just so a few selected kids can go to a private school and have it paid for. And then, you know, what about the kids that aren't selected? What about the kids who have, you know, some sort of disability or some sort of exceptionality that that none of this legislation addresses except to say that the private school has no obligation to educate those kids in their exceptionalities. But the public school still does, you know, how do we pay for all of that, when when when you're simply spending all of this time to move this, you know, this kind of national voucher scheme? On Americans? It's, it's, you know, it's it's, well, quite frankly, it's crazy. And that's, that's what's happening in Kansas?
Well, we are seeing like a very large financial note estimated right now, I talked to Christy Williams, the chair of the House K through 12, education budget committee afterwards. And she said that the financial note is not or fiscal note, sorry, is not actually accurate. It could be like, just a rough estimate. But I think right now we're looking at I think, 5000 per student leaving the public education system.
Yeah, I think the the fiscal note that was released just hours before the hearing, which is kind of unusual. Set 100 and $50 million, roughly. Yeah, that's figuring I think just sort of I think that's just kind of positing a potential math problem of how to figure out the impact of these education savings account vouchers. I think it's likely to be much, much more. I mean, the bill sets up a whole administrative process for the State Treasurer to go through to establish and administer these accounts. You know, the people who serve on this board that would be set up to administer the education savings accounts, get per diem and mileage there's account, you know, so I think, you know, a lot of us, there are a lot of like, there are a lot of people who are much smarter than me, who were doing back of the napkin math, and I think I think it's not out of the question to say that that fiscal note could probably be double what was released yesterday, so let's just say $300 million. Meanwhile, you know, KSP K and EA, others are working like mad to get the legislature to fully fund special education at a at a, you know, a phased in process of $75 million a year. You know, that's an this fiscal note would, okay, let's say even the 150 million, that's about two years, the 300 million, which I think is probably more in the ballpark, that would completely solve that problem. But you know, here we are having this fight about vouchers when we could be doing what's right for kids.
Well, I'm going to disagree with Leon one thing. There aren't a whole lot of people that I know that are smarter than me. That's number one. But But the other thing to think about here is let's let's just pull back the curtain on what all of this really is. I mean, if you wanted to set up kind of a a shadow board of education, if you wanted to completely circumnavigate the Constitution and the constitutional authority of the state board of education, this is how you would do it. You would set up this group, you would tie it to legislation around a voucher scheme, you would then you know, set up this board that has you know, essentially decision making authority over all aspects of this, you would you would make the treasurer be responsible and grow, you know, its its ranks, I guess, to administer the funding of all of this, and it would just completely take it out of the State Board of Education entirely. And and, you know, that, quite frankly, is is the constitutional authority in Kansas, of governing and making sure that that public education in Kansas is working that education Kansas is working, is the State Board of Education, those are our elected officials. And, you know, this is, quite honestly, a pretty weak attempt to I guess, obfuscate that strategy.
And then just to give like an overview of some of the impact of the bill, basically, Kansas students that are eligible for public school enrollment at the elementary through high school level, or disabled children eligible for preschool programs are all qualified. So that's a pretty large range, right? And then to be eligible for the school program. For your own school. If you wanted to make one it would be any nonpublic elementary or high school approved by the Board, along with preschool serving students with disabilities. So I mean, under this, I mean, there's not like a lot of regulation. Like you were saying,
yeah, the bill specifically serves, I think it's towards the end of the bill. None of these schools shall be subject to any governmental regulation. So that's, you know, that I think, probably sounds good to some people. Oh, let's get the government out of education. Right. Well, okay. Let's just if you posit that maybe that's a good thing. Well, you know, it's not a good thing, because schools are where kids are not only educated, they're fed, you know, school teachers, principals, other folks in the buildings are mandatory reporters for childhood trusts where we, it's where we notice thing, yeah, yeah. You know, that's where kids get dental exams, they get eye exams, sometimes I think, you know, kids even get, you know, immunizations at school clinics, you know, so if you want to get government out of the business of education, and do that on the backs of Kansas school children, that's not acceptable.
Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I don't think anybody again, is opposed to, you know, some of the ideas of what what homeschoolers, and private schools do what they want to do, we already have, you know, avenues for them to do those things. What we're opposed to is weakening our, our neighborhood schools weakening our schools statewide, in order to pay for a few to get selected. Remember, the only choice that's being made here is the choice that the private school has? Yeah, I mean, quite honestly, it's very clear. They can choose who they want, when they want how they want. And they can choose to tell those, those those kids, thank you. But you're gone. Now. I also want to think about this under this bill. In particular, if you're a parent who's already made the choice to send your child to a private school, because you have those resources, you have the ability to travel to, you know, take your kid to a private school, whatever it is, that's great. That's your choice. Now under this, these are going to be the first people in line to take advantage of some of these things don't Don't you think? Oh, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because because, you know, to them, this is like, well, this is free money. And certainly the age ranges make it even more Yeah, you know, palatable for them. I mean, you could literally, you know, go to a private school, you know, through your entire K 12 education and have public school pay for it. But what about those kids who don't have options in rural schools in, you know, you name it, or just maybe they have a disability or whatever, and they're not going to get chosen? If we weaken the public schools, if we weaken the neighborhood schools, which is what this does, that's a real problem.
Got it. And then one other thing I thought was like, especially kind of interesting about this is that the specify that the context or religious nature have any product or services that are paid for using this education savings fund, like, again, you cannot, like, you cannot exhibit something on the basis of whether or not it's religious. So you could buy Bibles technically, as a school supply. What do you think about that?
Well, I think that's that's been developed in response to some recent US Supreme Court decisions. And so, you know, I think that probably does pass constitutional muster, because of some of the US Supreme Court decisions that have been handed down.
Well, and whether it does or not, I mean, I think they're, they're willing to test those waters is the idea. So separation of church and state, you know, is something that is almost scoffed at by some of these people. Until it until that that separation benefits them. And that's really the irony, and all of this is, you know, we talked about, we talked about small government, we talked about democracy, but we have a chairperson in the K 12 Budget Committee, who wouldn't even allow questions like the one you just asked asked to be asked of the reviser. At the start of yesterday's committee hearing, who would tell the conferees very clearly, we're going to stop you, when we when we decide, you know, we're not going to hear everything you have to say. Now, they would say it's equal, because, you know, we have, let's say, 10 people who support this, and 20 people who oppose this, well, we'll give the 10 people four minutes and the 20 people two minutes. Well, that's not equal. Either you either you have your say, or you don't have your say, and you don't have a full say. But that's, you know, that's neither here nor there, except to say that democracy is if you want to see a democracy being distorted, go to the K 12, House Budget Committee hearing and watch how that goes, and how that's ruled with an iron fist to be quite honest with you.
And just for viewers here, what Marcus is referring to is that during yesterday's hearing, I think proponents were given about 3.5 minutes. Yeah. And then people who oppose the bill were given about two and a half minutes to make their case. She was saying it's an issue of timing. But, uh, I mean, how do you how do you feel about that breakdown?
Oh, that's, that's something that's been going on for years and legislators. So it's, unfortunately, it's something that we've all prepared for. Yeah.
And also going on the issues of transparency. We've mentioned a little bit about the board, that would be in charge of the education savings account under this legislation. Looking at that breakdown of the board, it seems like either Christy Williams, who is the chair of the K through 12, education budget, or the House Education Committee Chair, who's also a member of that committee would be one of the seats filled? I mean, do you think that would be a conflict of interest?
Gosh, I'm not I don't know if I'm qualified to comment on that. I think what what sticks out to me, when I look at the composition of that board, is there's really no representation from the people who would be impacted the most. So nobody who's a public school teacher, nobody who's a public school administrator, principal, superintendent, you know, no school board members. So. So that really is what is most concerning to me, it does feel quite stacked against public education. Well,
and we have elected officials who have a constitutional duty to do this work, and they do do this work. But we are replacing those elected officials with, you know, some some, quite honestly, cherry picked, you know, board that they decide is, you know, what's best, it's absurd, in the extreme is what it is.
And then going back to the whole having a voice thing, have you felt that the legislature has given you and the public educators like a voice or? Well,
you know, they hold the hearings, and we're allowed to testify. So I don't want to spend a lot of time complaining about only having two and a half minutes, because that's not going to change, you know, so we just have to, to rally our people and sitting, you know, sitting there in the hearing room, yesterday, people were talking about how they had practice to a three minute version of their remarks and a two minute version of their remarks, right? Because, you know, you know, that there are a lot of people who are going to testify, and you have to be flexible. So, you know, I don't want to spend too much time complaining about that, because, you know, we just have to live with it. And I'm glad that I'm not, you know, a parent who, you know, had to take time off of work and, and shows up at a hearing, and then they find out, you know, right before they're ready to go on to they literally have sometimes, you know, 30 seconds,
or how about a former teacher of the year who travels, you know, after her duty day, yes, across the state to deliver testimony, and then as denigrated by the very committee members who say that they are, you know, supporters of educators, you know, and that happened, and that happens frequently. I mean, Lee is exactly right, this, this is not anything new. But what makes it egregious is, you know, when we when we hear, you know, a piped in video stream from from, you know, some policy wonk at the Goldwater Institute give a 15 minute lecture on the values of some of these things, but we're only giving Kansans, you know, two minutes, maybe, and that's supposed to be okay. And so Leah's right, it's not going to change and US complaining about it's not going to not going to change it. But what will change and what we do want people to understand is that that's one part of the process. The real work happens in our homes, in our in our home districts in our in our home neighborhoods and things like that, where people realize this is going on and say, You know what, I'm not going to let my neighborhood school I'm not going to let my public school, you know, be undercut be the, you know, the bank of the private school, where my kid gets no benefit at all.
Yeah, mentioning funding. I also thought it was interesting during the meeting that some lawmakers were saying that public schools are actually not underfunded for the past decade.
Yeah, I don't know where that's coming from. I guess that's that's magic math, no one has ever been able to explain that to me. I mean, the Supreme Court ruled that schools were underfunded, I think if you talk to school board, she talked to superintendents who have to pay the bills and carry out carry out the programs for kids, schools were underfunded. And we are still seeing the impacts of that, you know, when you underfunded schools for 10 years, and you fight public schools, tooth and nail for every single dime, and then you try to talk about oh, kids and their test scores. Well, I'm sorry, that doesn't compute. And, you know, I tried to push back on that in the hearing, you know, you can complain about test scores if you want. But, you know, I think a lot of that could be laid at the feet of legislature. And so it's very cynical, to cut funding for 10 years. fight tooth and nail complain. And, and also, you know, they don't want to fund special education. But now we want to, you know, give more money away, rather than just do the right thing and support public education, Kansas support, you know, half a million kids.
Well, and when you restrict, and you ignore the voices of the people who work most closely with students every day, that those are the educators that work in these schools, whether they be administrators or teachers, or whomever. It's easy to invent this narrative, when you don't have you know, the experience that they're facing in the classroom with classroom violence and materials issues. And you know, how we're going to pay for this, how we're going to pay for that it's easy to invent those narratives. And just, you know, put them out there. But the the math is, is, is really pretty clear. It's funny, too, because, you know, it was it was the Republicans who commissioned several studies during that what we call the last decade, that showed very clearly that schools were being grossly underfunded during that period of time, that kind of contributed to, you know, some of the evidence that that this was happening. And, of course, as Leah said, The Supreme Court ruled that it happened and that it can't continue to happen. So now we have these programs, these schemes that try and just kind of go around those those rulings, and find their own kind of unique path to doing exactly what they want it to do to begin with.
So let's talk about the broader ground this to you. I mean, we're seeing like, again, parental freedom. People don't want this to be called like a voucher program, that sort of thing. And then we also seeing, I think, Wednesday, is the parental Bill of Rights coming up for discussion again. So I mean, if all these bills are damaging public schools, how do you fight back against this sort of rhetoric? What are the solutions here?
Well, you know, I'm not I'm not sure what the exact solutions are, except for people to be aware and to take action and to be to be involved with organizations like our two organizations and to, you know, to be involved to keep your eyes on things beyond just the title of a bill. So the parents Bill of Rights is a great example, who would oppose a Bill of Rights for parents? I mean, come on, who that seems pretty clear. Unfortunately, what that Bill purported to do last year, and yes, it's it's changed some this year. But what that purported to do last year, was was far more damaging than than what it ever appeared to be on the on the premise that somehow parents didn't have access to to raise complaints about what was going on in their school, to have a due process for a hearing and to understand how to make changes in their child's school or in their child's curriculum, all of that premise was false. Every school district has an elected local board of education, they hear these issues they have, they have processes where administrators can be alerted that all of this stuff can be, you know, elevated to that level. And decisions are made, whether they are curriculum decisions, or content decisions, or whatever all of those processes exist. But what the real crux of this is, is that there are some people who don't like the decisions that are made. So instead of instead of agreeing that, you know, we have the process in place, we're going to just say, Hey, we're going to make this bill of rights. You know, you can tell your child to learn in any way you want. The teacher has no, you know, rights or authority to define lessons or the district can't define curriculum, you know, all of this kind of thing. That all sounds, you know, kind of very small government, I guess, but at the end of the day, you start to have conflicting what's the word conflicting obligations, conflicting priorities. So for example, under the last parent's Bill of Rights, if if a child was on a swing on the playground, and my child decided to go and forcibly remove that kid and take the swing, and the teeth You're decided, hey, that goes against our, you know, fighting on the playground policy or something, I could opt my child out of any kind of countability. for that. So is that really what we want is that kind of, you know, open free for all, I don't think it is. And certainly, that's, that's kind of a hyperbolic example. And I admit that, but but when you take these things down to what they really can do, you can see that they can be really harmful. And, you know, that's that's kind of what we're on the watch for, not to mention the fact that, you know, I would love to see at any point, these people who talk about how much they love our educators, come up with an educators, you know, Bill of Rights work with our organizations, the people who represent educators throughout Kansas, and let's talk about what it would look like to end violence against educators in classrooms, what it would look like to end bullying in classrooms, what it would look like to have administrators have the resources and tools they need to solve the problems that they face every day in schools. That's not what we're talking about, unfortunately, our
concern about the bill that's being heard tomorrow, is that the way it's drafted, you know, it says that parents can object to things which, you know, that are weak, Marcus just said, That's already the case. But it says you can you can take your child out of, of classes that you deem harmful? Well, the way it's written, if I have a child who struggles with math, sorry, flight or children, you know, and they're having a terrible time, it's causing a lot of drama, I could opt them out of college, you know, of algebra one in high school, because it's stressing them out. Well, that's not doing anybody any favors, you know, allowing a kid to be opted out of a core subject that is going to prepare them, you know, for success out in the world doesn't do the kid any favors, you know, and so that's something that we're going to talk about tomorrow is that, you know, this, this bill is really, it's overly broad. And it really is not in the best interest of children, because it would allow parents to opt them out of any number of things.
And and not only opt them out, but But the bill also I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong goes on to say that you can't be held to any standards of measurement after you opt them out. So if there's a if there's a test at the end to measure how they did in algebra,
their record can't suffer, negatively impacted or something like that. And yeah, and so it's just that's very concerning that you could opt your kid out of Reading, Writing arithmetic, and there's no there's to community, and there's no, there's no way for the school to try to help that kid, get that learning back and, and try to work with, you know, work with within the process to get those kids educated to their potential.
We also know that a lot of this comes from, you know, this, again, this national movement against, you know, kind of, we're waging the social wars in our in our schools. I mean, and that's, that's clear, you know, when when we see what happened in Kansas in August, and we see where the will of young voters is today are today. That's something that's that's troubling to the people who want to move those social wars forward. So we bring those into the classroom, and we say, you know, you can't have books that say this are books that that, you know, talk about that, you know, and so we need a mechanism to have those books removed. But what if I'm a parent who I want my student to have access to a wide, diverse range of experiences? You know, where are my rights? Are my rights protected under this bill? I think that's a question. And I know that there are some parents that are willing to ask that question.
Gotcha. And we're down to the last few minutes here. So I'm just gonna ask really quick, how are you seeing like, is this atmosphere? I mean, obviously, there's been underfunding in the public schools over the last 10 years. But right now, are you seeing this like, kind of attitude toward educators is the worst it's been in a while or
I think it's the rhetoric is stronger this year than I've seen it? In the past. It seems like in previous years, the reticle was more around at least for KSB it was more well you guys just want more money. You know, it was just kind of going after the the organizations like KSB or K and EA, but now you know, teachers we just don't like NEA. Right yeah. Or you know, those types of things. And so now to talk about woke agendas and things like that, you know, I that thinks that you know, those kinds of comments. It really takes me aback because when I say okay, we represent the 286 school boards in Kansas, all of the school boards in Kansas belong to que ASB I have not met all of them, but I've met many of them. You know what they are? Uh, they are pretty much representative of the state of Kansas. To say that, you know, a school board member out in ODIs bison is somehow perpetrating some kind of woke agenda on children, you know, or Goodland or or Phillipsburg. I mean, that's baffling to me. And so that that is is where I see the difference this year is that it be it has become much more kind of personal and much more of a cultural war, instead of just, you know, yeah, we like teachers, we just don't like candy or something
like yeah, and to give some context to what you just said, on the Republican GOP or Kansas GOP legislative agenda for this legislative session. They have made one of their priorities fighting a sexualized Work Agenda. When we asked them questions about what this agenda would entail. We didn't really get a clear answer back. But over and over, we've been hearing that a priority is fighting a sexualized Work Agenda. perpetuated in the schools. So Marcus, yeah, well,
you know, I think that's it as a as a comms person. You know, this is this is message framing. This is misinformation, disinformation. This is about energizing a base around issues that quite honestly don't really exist. You know, it assumes that there are people throughout Kansas, who turn a blind eye entirely when when things happen, that might be that might raise eyebrows or ask or cause people to ask questions. I mean, that just doesn't happen. It assumes that nobody in Kansas is is watching what's going on in schools, except for the people in these committees in this legislature, which is absolutely ridiculous. It also assumes, you know, when we talk about things like the trans athlete bill, it assumes that we have this this large population of high school age boys who are willing to, to come to school, compete, and and completely change their gender identity, so that they can steal a scholarship. I mean, that's ridiculous. We're simply trying to use the culture wars, they're simply trying to use the culture wars, to drive a wedge and to make sure that that people have a target. This is this is a messaging ploy. It's a misinformation disinformation ploy strategy, to drive that wedge to bring the image of our public education system down. And then at the same time to kind of circumnavigate the constitutional authority of the state board of education, the local boards of education. You know, we talked about local control, we talked about small government, but when it's when it's not convenient to actually have those people do their their jobs, we want to legislate around them. And that's, that's, I think, something that should be very concerning to all candidates.
I think that's all the time we have left. Thank you guys so much for joining us here today. This has been a look at K through 12 education in this state.
