Opinion ID: 2518321
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: base state aid per pupil

Text: BSAPP is the foundation upon which school district funding is built, as state financial aid to schools is determined by multiplying BSAPP by each district's weighted enrollment. See K.S.A. 72-6410(b). When the SDFQPA was first implemented in 1992, BSAPP was set at $3,600. It remained at that level until 1995, when it was increased by $26 to $3,626. Small increases were funded each year thereafter until the 2002-03 school year. During the years of increases, the amounts ranged from an additional $22 to $50 per student. From 2002 until 2005, the statute allowed for a BSAPP of $3,890; however, only $3,863 was funded. Over the span of time from when the SDFQPA was implemented in 1992 until 2005, the legislature increased the BSAPP only a total of $263. As the plaintiffs point out, if the BSAPP had been increased to keep up with inflation, in 2001 alone the increase would have been $557. The A&M study recommended increasing the base to $4,650 in 2001, resulting in $623.3 million in additional funding (in 2001 dollars). H.B. 2247 increases the BSAPP from $3,890 to $4,222. Only $115 of the $359 increase is new money; the balance was achieved by eliminating the correlation weighting and shifting those dollars to BSAPP. The $115 increase translates to $63.3 million in additional funding flowing into the financing formula for the 2005-06 school year. The State argues the legislature considered actual costs in deciding upon the increase. The plaintiffs point out that the legislature had the A&M study recommendations, as well as the results of a 2005 survey conducted by Deputy Commissioner of Education Dale Dennis for the Senate Education Committee. The survey, which requested cost information from selected school districts, showed the BSAPP should be $6,057. The plaintiffs argue that the legislature ignored the A&M and Dennis figures, instead looking at historical expenditures and arbitrarily choosing a BSAPP level based on political compromises and what it believed it could afford without raising taxes. The Board contends that the increase in the BSAPP, coupled with increases in the at-risk and bilingual weightings, provide a substantial increase in funding for those middle-sized and large districts with a high proportion of such students. By implication, this is an argument that the BSAPP increase helps equalize the funding disparity suffered by those districts. The plaintiffs, on the other hand, claim that increasing the BSAPP only exacerbates the inequities in the system because the formula was not adjusted to make distorted weights, such as the low-enrollment weight, correspond to actual costs. For example, for every $1 of base funding that middle-sized or large districts receive, some low-enrollment districts receive $2.14. The plaintiffs assert Dr. Bruce Baker's testimony at trial and his earlier report described this effect. At a minimum, the increased BSAPP provided for in H.B. 2247 substantially varies from any cost information in the record and from any recommendation of the Board or the State Department of Education.