Rural Kansas school district sought funding — despite not having any students enrolled

The Kansas Legislature stripped a school district of funding after it contracted with neighboring school districts to teach all of its students.

Healy Unified School District 468 sought to use an average two-year lookback to get roughly $450,000, which covers about 30 students in the state’s per-pupil funding formula, despite not teaching any students. The bill was conceived and drawn up on the last day of the legislative session after the district communicated its intent to seek all available funding.

“What this district is proposing is that this next school year the elementary school year will be contracted out for a different district. That means we’ll have a school district that did not dissolve that has no students attending the schools,” said Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg.

Healy is the smallest school district in Kansas

Healy is the smallest school district in Kansas with just 21 students in the 2023-2024 school year. The year prior, it had 38. Under the current Kansas school funding formula, it was able to use the average of the past two years when requesting funding from the state.

The district has been sending their high school and middle school students to neighboring districts over the past several years but maintained elementary education. Over the past school year, the district grappled with its future as enrollment declined.

“At our November School Board Meeting, the Healy USD 468 Board of Education voted to keep the Healy School District open throughout the remainder of the 2023-2024 school year and over the next few months develop a plan for the future of our school district,” Healy’s part-time superintendent Jeff Jones wrote to Healy parents in November .

Jones didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The district said it was financially sound, but the shrinking number of students would force the district to make “some hard decisions regarding what the best plan is moving forward.”

Among those decisions would be whether or not to dissolve the district, which would then prompt the Kansas State Board of Education to carve up the district’s borders to align with neighboring school districts. It also would cease funding, which would stop Healy from doing what it wants with the funds — renovate the elementary school into a community center.

“The money was not going to be used to educate a single student that was in that attendance center. The money would be used to keep the school building open for a community center,” Baumgardner said. “We are not debating whether or not that facility should be used as a community center, that’s for the community to decide. What this bill says is that when a student enrolls in a different district, the funding will be received by that different district.”

For Healy, that would mean funds for their contracted students would go to Western Plains High School, which taught Healy’s high school students during the past school year. Jones also serves as a part-time superintendent of Western Plains.

Eight Kansas school districts have fewer than 100 students

The bill to strip Healy of funding passed overwhelmingly but receive some pushback from legislators who viewed it as a punishment on small rural school districts.

Sen. Alicia Straub, R-Ellinwood, told members of her caucus that if Healy didn’t get funding, the school would slip into disrepair and that illegal immigrants would move into the school.

Straub was joined in her opposition by Sen. Dennis Pyle, R-Hiawatha, and Rick Billinger, R-Goodland, and House members Jim Minnix, R-Scott City, and John Carmichael, D-Wichita.

There are eight other districts in Kansas with fewer than 100 students and 20 districts with fewer than 200. But legislators said this is the first time a district sought funding while contracting their entire student base to neighboring districts.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Rural Kansas school district sought funding — despite not having any students enrolled