Sumner County school patrons speak with Steve Abrams about consolidation bill in Topeka. (Courtesy photo).

by James Jordan and Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — The bill calling for the consolidation of school districts, including those in Sumner County, drew a lot of heat in a committee hearing Wednesday at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka. The measure, introduced yesterday in a House Education Committee hearing, if passed into law would consolidate school districts, not the schools themselves. The law would reduce the school districts in Kansas from 286 to 132.

Fifteen Sumner County representatives of administrators, board members, patrons and one teacher took the voyage to Topeka yesterday to hear debate on H.B. 2504. They also visited with the state representatives Kasha Kelley and Kyle Hoffman; and State Senator Steve Abrams – all who represent Sumner County. The committee room was overflowing with some standing in the hallway.

South Haven School Superintendent Lynn Archer said when her group met with Kelley, she said she did not think this particular bill would go any further in its current form. But that doesn’t mean the it couldn’t be merged with another bill later, or reintroduced in another bill altogether. Abrams told the group he is against mandatory consolidation. Neither would elaborate on the issue any further at their office meeting with Sumner County school representatives Wednesday, Archer said.

There were 41 people speaking against the matter Wednesday, and only two for it, according to published reports.

The bill has just been introduced and only at the committee level. It has a long way to go before passage, and would have to be passed by the Kansas State Senate before arriving on the desk of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback. Even if the bill dies, many feel it is the first step toward eventual consolidation of several rural school districts.

According to the proposal, Sumner County would have just one school district and one superintendent. According to the bill sponsors, merging the school districts would save the state an estimated $173 million over 10 years. But opponents warned the bill could lead to school closings and questioned whether it was in the best interest of the students.

Rep. John Bradford, R-Lansing, defended his bill against critics, saying it wouldn’t lead to the effects that patrons of rural and small districts fear. Locals were not convinced Wednesday.

Wellington Superintendent Rick Weiss, who was not on the Sumner County caravan, called the proposal “borderline lunacy.”

He questioned whether the state legislators would really push that bill through during an election year. He said the problem is the bill is not well written and does not answer a lot of questions.

“A lot of things were not thought out,” Weiss said. “How many board meetings would there be? How many meetings would a superintendent have to go to?”

Caldwell Superintendent Alan Jamison was also opposed to the measure, but said “I didn’t see anything in there for students, and that is a bigger concern.”

Jamison would go onto say:

Our belief is no matter how it gets spun by Representative Bradford, the author of the bill, our schools will eventually close, school boards will be merged, local control will slip away from the smaller districts in the realignment, and even though this may eventually happen, this bill will speed up the process exponentially.  An example that our smaller schools have worked together before and continue to work together, but there are different cultures in each community and the patrons what those preserved and want to make the choice to consolidate and not have it come from Topeka.

Jamison said every school and every county is different with different populations and land areas.

“There was a reason some schools didn’t consolidate in the 60s,” he said in reference to a consolidation that happened on a large scale more than 50 years ago.

Jamison also noted the bill did not address many issues and if boards had to figure out what to do in a short period of time, it would cause a lot of problems.

Another concern, Jamison said, is if there were just one county school district, no matter how you draw the lines, eventually the larger district would get the most power or most voting rights. Some would be left without representation and the bigger schools would eventually be looking out for their own interests.

While state officials say the bill does not close any schools, a county wide administrative center that was running the district could in theory at least vote to close a school.

At the hearing Wednesday, State Representative Ed Trimmer, who represents the east edge of Sumner County, asked if a district could vote to close a school under this plan. Bradford said it was not likely, but conceded it could happen.

Conway Springs Superintendent Clay Murphy had similar sentiments, and said he doubts legislators know what superintendents do.

“It is not just a desk job,” he said. “At smaller schools we do all kinds of things. We fix toilets and substitute teach.”

He said if a county were to be consolidated from seven districts to one, that means the belief is a superintendent only works 20 percent of the time.

“Nowhere does this bill say anything about improving education,” Murphy said. “It is just about money.”

Murphy also said that it seems like state legislators want schools to be run like a business, which is not practical.

He suggested too that legislators are not calling it consolidation because they want to put it in the hands of local people to make those decisions. They want local officials to be the bad guys instead of them.

For several years local school officials have watched the state manipulate funds and have gradually made some steep cuts in education.

Last year the legislature started requiring local school boards to send tax money they collect to Topeka, and the state then sends it back to the schools. This is the local option budget that school boards can use to raise part of their financing locally.

Jamison noted the irony that state legislators often complain about federal overreach, but those same legislators are not shy about telling local governing bodies what to do.

According to a Wichita Eagle report, Rep. Ron Highland, R-Wamego, the House Education chairman, said he did not plan to move forward with the legislation any time soon.

“Because of the volume of information and the outpouring of emotions on both sides, we need to take a long, hard look at it,” Highland said. “And as suggestions have been made we need to look at other ways (to save money).”

Brian Koon, legislative director for Kansas Families for Education, called the bill’s savings small change when weighed against the state’s budget and against the potential impact to rural districts. He offered lawmakers a hat full of coins and small bills if they were so desperate for money.

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