Topeka ? As the school year comes to a close, educators find themselves right back where they started: looking for leadership from state government.

The year began just weeks after Gov. Bill Graves cut school spending by $17.4 million, reducing the aid per pupil by $27, to $3,863. Even before the first bell, schools were cutting programs, limiting purchases of supplies and pinching pennies.

Months later, the gubernatorial campaign set the tone for the legislative session, with Gov. Kathleen Sebelius promising not to cut education or raise taxes.

In the minds of most education officials, the 2003 session was pretty much a wash.

“In the short term, districts are worse off, but it would have been worse if legislators made the cuts people were talking about,” said Mark Tallman, lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards.

To survive and maintain a quality product, districts will — or have — trimmed staff, programs and activities from their budgets, Tallman said.

Those moves were the result of receiving $7 less in base state aid per pupil for the current school year than districts did in the 2001-02 school year, while operating costs for insurance, teacher salaries, supplies and utilities continued to increase.

Base state aid per pupil will be $3,863 for the 2003-04 school year. Repeated efforts to restore the cuts, including a $257 million package of tax increases, failed.

Unsuccessful increase

Chuck Schmidt, superintendent at Wabaunsee East in Eskridge, said the 16 freshman lawmakers who tried to push through a tax increase deserve credit for their willingness to solve the budget crisis and help education, instead of resorting to more gimmickry to balance the books.

That gimmickry involved delaying $213 million in aid payments to school districts until July 1 and accelerating some local property tax collections.

“Hopefully, the courage of the 16 will rub off on the rest and they will do what is necessary to maintain quality education,” Schmidt said.

Unfunded mandates

Tallman said the state’s costs for enacting federal No Child Left Behind mandates posed a greater long-term problem. “That’s the real train wreck that’s waiting to happen,” he said.

The mandate requires 100 percent proficiency among students in math and reading by 2014.

However, Tallman said, doing so requires significant increases among the most difficult students to educate at a time when legislators are not directing dollars toward intervention programs or professional development for teachers.

Winfield Supt. Marvin Estes agreed that sound fiscal policy was being ignored.

“I fear that we are on a slippery slope and that soon our lack of real funding solutions will create an overwhelming crisis in public schools,” said Estes, noting that delaying school payments did not create immediate problems for districts.