Members of the Special Committee on K-12 Student Success unanimously voted to table a draft report on K-12 education and send it to legislative staff for a rewrite in Topeka, Kan., Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (Thad Allton/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP)

Topeka ? A draft report recommending ways that Kansas could overhaul its school funding system was tabled by a special legislative committee on Tuesday.

But key lawmakers say its contents may still become the foundation of a new finance system, and education groups are already organizing so they can be ready to respond to it during the 2016 legislative session.

“They’re not out-of-line suggestions. They are in line with what the committee was given as direction to look at,” said Rep. Ron Highland, R-Wamego, who chaired the special committee and wrote the draft report. “I think the recommendations, some will be dealt with very quickly and heavily by committees, and some won’t.”

During the 2015 session, lawmakers repealed the old per-pupil funding formula that had been in place since 1992 and replaced it for two years with block grants to school districts. That bill also established the Special Committee on K-12 Student Success to meet during the summer and fall to hear testimony and begin work drafting a new formula.

Highland presented his version of a draft report to the panel Tuesday, but it was eventually tabled so it could be sent through the Legislative Research Department. Some members said it did not reflect all of the testimony the committee heard, and made recommendations that had not been fully discussed in the committee.

“I would say there are a few things that I wasn’t certain we had discussed,” said Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., a member of the panel who also chairs the House Appropriations Committee, which will likely have a major role in crafting a new formula.

Recommendations

Still, Ryckman said he thinks many elements of the draft report will be debated as legislation during the upcoming session.

Some of the key elements of the report include:

• Reconsider use of the annual standardized tests in reading and math that are administered by Kansas University’s Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation, and consider switching to some other third-party test, possibly the ACT, that is developed by firms outside the state of Kansas.

“You run into perception problems,” Highland said. “If you’re doing in-house testing and reporting the results as being wonderful, people will ask, was this test a good one, or was it designed to produce good results that may not be true.”

• Overhauling the extra funding schools have received for “at-risk” students, those deemed to be at risk of failing or dropping out. Currently, Kansas counts students who qualify for free meals as “at-risk” students because poverty is generally considered a major risk factor in student success. Those students counted as almost 1.5 students for funding purposes under the old formula.

Critics of that system have said free-meal status is not necessarily an accurate indicator of a student’s chances of success. And while the cost of that funding has risen markedly in recent years due to changes in the formula and the state’s rising child poverty rate, they have argued that the money is not always used for programs that target those students, pointing to persistent achievement gaps between students from low-income and higher-income households.

• And putting tighter controls on the ability of school districts to issue bonds.

The state currently subsidizes bond and interest payments for districts with lower property valuations so that those districts don’t have to impose higher property tax rates than wealthier districts in order to finance comparable projects.

But lawmakers have long complained that it imposes costs on the state that the Legislature cannot control or predict when it approves budget bills in the spring. They say the cost of bond and interest aid can spike unpredictably, and often for projects such as football stadiums or other facilities that are not critical to the district’s educational needs.

School boards get prepared

On Wednesday, the day after the committee voted to table that report, the Kansas Association of School Boards went ahead with a webinar it had planned to brief local school board members about whatever report the panel might produce.

And despite the fact that it had been tabled, more than 200 people logged in to that hourlong webinar to hear what KASB had to say — possibly a record audience for any of its webinars, and an indicator that school groups are taking it seriously, KASB officials said.

“Many people saw the original draft as critical of the K-12 system,” said KASB lobbyist Mark Tallman, who conducted the webinar. “I think the position that school leaders have taken on this is both to acknowledge we aren’t at the desired level we want to be. We want to continue to improve, and I believe everyone is committed to do that. But we also want to acknowledge the positive things that have happened. The work for improvement is already underway. Hopefully more of that will be included in the final document.”

Tallman went point by point through the report, offering talking points for local school officials to use when discussing the report.

He noted, for example, that many districts already use alternative tests in addition to, or instead of, the state assessments, but that outside tests would not necessarily be aligned to Kansas curriculum standards, and therefore might not be an accurate measure of how students are doing.

He also acknowledged that at-risk funding is often used to reduce class sizes by hiring more teachers, which allows teachers to give more individual attention to at-risk students, but also benefits everyone else in the classroom as well.

And he said that while the state could look at imposing tighter standards on bond issues, any type of limits could run into constitutional problems in court if they result in giving some districts more or less access to bond funds.

Tallman said KASB plans to host regular Wednesday “Ed Days” at the Statehouse this year, days when local board members are invited to come to Topeka to meet with their local delegations to discuss education funding issues.

“We really want to try to find a way to strengthen the conversation all during the session, between school leaders and legislators, a massive task we have to educate legislators, many of whom know very little about these issues because they don’t work with them all the time,” Tallman said.