The president’s proposal for free community college education fits in well with the plans of the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools, according to David Smith, district spokesman and chief of staff.
“Our goals, by 2021, are to have one year of community college finished before they leave us,” Smith said. “The president’s plan fits right in with that, so it’s exciting to hear.”
In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, the president proposed two free years of community college.
Research from Georgetown University shows that many jobs in the future will require some college education, Smith said.
In Kansas, there is a projection that by the year 2020, about 70 percent of the jobs will require postsecondary education, he said.
“It’s clear that to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, you’re going to need a postsecondary education,” he said.
He said when thinking about postsecondary education, the federal government should include options for technical training, including certificate training, for the future.
In the Kansas City, Kan., district, students will be able to have dual enrollment in college classes during their later high school years.
At this time it is not known yet how Congress will respond to the proposal for free community college education, and Congress has not yet said that it would be interested, but it is a proposal that would benefit large portions of Kansas, he said. The details have not yet been worked out, he said, but if it moves forward, the proposal may include the federal government picking up portions of the cost, and the states picking up another portion.
State Sen. Pat Pettey, D-6th Dist., also likes the free community college idea.
“It reminds me a lot of the Dotte Promise,” she said. That was a program she supported several years ago that would have spent charitable donations on college scholarships for all Wyandotte County high school graduates.
“Anything that we can do to help families invest in their children’s future is a plus,” said Sen. Pettey, a retired teacher who serves on the Education Committee.
The reality, she said, is that because of finances, many families here cannot provide a college education for their children, although they want to.
Some of the details of the president’s plan have to be worked out yet, and one may call for about 8 hours a week of community service, which strikes her as a little ambitious. The community service component in her former plan called for 20 to 30 hours a semester.
There is also a grade component to the president’s plan, of about a C-plus average. She said she would be concerned that some late bloomer students may not qualify although they might have been able to do the work in college.
“I certainly support the (overall) concept,” she said, adding that anything that can help parents and children go on to postsecondary education was a worthy goal.
School finance update
Smith said the Kansas City, Kan., district also currently is waiting to see what the details will be in the governor’s proposal to give block funding to school districts instead of using the school finance formula.
Smith disagrees that a new school finance formula is needed. He does not believe the formula is too complicated.
“Our formula currently does a good job of connecting what it actually costs to serve kids with the budget,” he said.
If the formula is eliminated, then it may not be able to connect the actual costs to serve kids with the budget, he said.
“The impact of that means less resources available for the kids who come to school with the most challenges,” Smith said. “That would be unfair and a step backwards in terms of our progress as a state in education.”
As Kansas courts said at the end of December about the school finance formula, it is not broken, it just needs to be funded, Smith said. He said he hopes that the state is not talking about changing the formula in order to avoid paying to educate kids in Kansas.
Turner Assistant Superintendent Jason Dandoy said that the district was looking forward to some clarification on how the block grant will be distributed. The district would be opposed to any change to the formula until it knows that students with specific needs would be taken care of in that proposal. Currently, students with special needs such as at-risk, developmental delays or non-English language are given extra weighting in the formula. The district would oppose any proposal that makes cuts to students across Kansas, he added.
Sen. Pettey said pieces of the governor’s plan are coming out little by little. It’s difficult to know what areas are being cut when they are talking about block grants, she added. At this point, it appears that over the two years of the governor’s budget plan, there would be at least a $127 million cut in kindergarten to 12th grade education statewide.
If the proposal gives school districts a flat amount of money, the same amount as last year, in reality it will not be flat if they pull out the pension funds (Kansas Public Employees Retirement System) from it, she added.
Also, if districts are given a flat amount, the same as last year, what happens if there are 25 or 100 new students in a district this year, she asked.
If the districts are not given a funding increase based on an increase in the number of students, that would mean less money for teachers, support staff and everything, she said. As the budget and tax staff get a clearer picture of these areas, the legislators will know more in the future, she added.