The Blade-Empire sat down with USD 333 Superintendent Tom DeBauche in the first of an ongoing discussion about the school district. In this session, DeBauche talks about how funding moves through an education system.
From top to bottom, there’s a method and numerous calculations that set how much cash a public school receives from the state and its surrounding community.
“We’re funded through a partnership between the State of Kansas and the local taxpayers. So the state provides basically foundational and equalization funding, which is based on enrollment of our students; the number of students we have and the specific needs of the students,” DeBauche said. “Let’s say we have 1,100 students, so we’re funded on 1,100, but they also take the different needs that students have. So, a student might have some special education needs, some at-risk needs, transportation needs, and so all those go into a weighting, and then that’s multiplied by that number through a finance formula.”
He continued, “With that formula counting 1,100 students, the weighting might end up being 1,800 with the different needs, that’s how it’s taken into account.”
These funds mostly support salaries, education expenses, curriculum development and general education-focused needs, while capital outlay funds and supplemental operations funds come from different sources and fund critical education needs.
Capital outlay funds are sourced from a local tax imposed by the school district on its residents that is capped by the state legislature. These funds support general maintenance, strategic preventative work and repair needs for the district’s buildings.
According to DeBauche, local property taxes support a district in small ways that all add up to a larger impact. Beyond these local and state funds, the school also receives a certain amount of federal funding for specific student programs.
Special education has its own funding pot to support those programs, and according to DeBauche, it hasn’t been fully funded by the State of Kansas in years.
“It’s supposed to be funded at 92%, so that means the state provides 92% of funding and we provide the other 8%,” DeBauche said. “No one has ever been 92% funded. Every year it gets harder and harder… for every percent that we’re short of that 92%, that comes out of our general budget, and we have to spend that money on special ed; there’s no way around it.”
He continued, “So that makes it more difficult to be able to give raises and different things like that because more and more of that money has to be earmarked for special education, which we have to give those kids services they need to be successful. So every time that percentage falls short, we have to make up for it out of the general budget, and then it makes it harder and harder to hire staff or keep staff because of just the shortfall that it creates.”
DeBauche has first-hand experience as a special education teacher, where he witnessed how funding directly impacts education and student scores.
“In my experience from coming from the classroom, to special education, to being a principal to now being a superintendent, funding absolutely impacts educational scores. But, it’s not as simple as more money equals higher scores, it’s really about how strategic you are with deploying those funds,” DeBauche said. “At the classroom level, funding directly impacts class size and research shows that the bigger the class size, the harder it is to achieve the results that you’re wanting to achieve. Funding also impacts access to tiered intervention for our struggling students who might need a smaller group, more individualized attention.”
He concluded by saying, “So the less teachers that we have, the less our ability is to be able to do that… Any initiatives that we’re trying to do, funding plays a part in that. Stable staffing, aligned curriculum and early intervention systems are the most important parts of getting our achievement data to where we want it to be. Funding alone doesn’t make or break a student outcome, but having clear priorities, accountability and alignment matter just as much as the dollars do.”
In the next discussion with DeBauche, he will talk about the ongoing issues with the facilities within the school district.
