School superintendents telling media that the money to fund Extraordinary Needs was deducted from the block grants may be giving the impression that they had to pay into the Extraordinary Needs fund from the block grants they collected, but that is not the case. As confirmed by Dale Dennis below, the money to fund Extraordinary Needs was not included in block grant money provided to school districts and it was excluded from the amounts listed in the KSDE printouts provided to legislators and school districts. Extraordinary Needs grants are in addition to what districts received in their block grants.
The confusion may stem from the manner in which Extraordinary Needs funding was determined. After block grant funding was set for each district, 0.4% of the amount was deducted from each grant to create the Extraordinary Needs fund. It would be fair to say that block grant funding could have been 0.4% higher if there was no Extraordinary Needs fund set aside, but districts do not have to pay into the Extraordinary Needs fund out of the money they are sent for block grants.
