County property tax nearly triples rate of inflation and population
- Tax & Spending
- March 8, 2018
You’d never know it from media reports or listening to the education lobby in Topeka, but 79 districts that lost students this year actually increased employment! And perhaps the greatest complainer of them all – Kansas City – added more employees than students. The adjacent table includes some of the more eye-opening disparities. Hutchinson (one
READ MOREDedicating income tax collections to school funding is the latest “Here, hold my beer” notion to come out of the Kansas Legislature this session, proving once again Thomas Sowell’s take on politics. He said, “No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying
READ MOREKansas school bond debt set another record for the 2015-16 school year at $5.56 billion spread across 183 districts. Data provided by the Kansas Department of Education shows school districts loaded up on a lot of new debt since 2005: $5.2 billion in new bond debt was issued by 149 districts. Debt Service payments totaled $4.9 billion.
READ MOREWith the 2017 Kansas Legislature careening toward a close, the majority of legislators in both chambers are doubling down on efforts to gouge citizens and leave generations of students behind so that those who profit from excessive and inefficient government can prosper. For those who might think that statement hyperbolical, consider the evidence: As shown
READ MOREAs the Kansas Legislature decides just how many hundreds of millions of dollars more to give to K-12 education, keep this in mind: using history as a guide, all that money will not improve student outcomes. The graphics are a testament to that. Combining per pupil spending, employment and enrollment data from KSDE with NAEP
READ MORESenate Bill 251, which is the Kansas Senate’s proposed new school funding formula, contains an unintentional math error that could cost citizens $83 million per year in unnecessary taxation if not corrected. The methodology for calculating Base State Aid Per Pupil (BSAPP) in the new formula is based on actual spending of 41 districts identified
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