House higher-education committee restores community-college and technical-college funding, suspends campus restoration transfer and adopts several KBOR-related

The House Committee on Higher Education Budget in Topeka approved a series of amendments and notations to the Kansas Board of Regents (KBOR) budget package during a multi-hour hearing, restoring several line items the Special Committee on Legislative Budget had pulled and adding targeted support for two-year institutions.

Representative Fairchild offered a package of amendments restoring funding that, he said, community colleges and technical colleges had considered recurring rather than one-time. The amendment included line items cited in committee discussion as: $14,300,000 for the two-year college business, industry and apprenticeship account; $17,500,000 for two-year college student-success initiatives; $5,000,000 for career-technical education capital outlay aid (renaming the account for community and technical college capital outlay); a specified distribution of $2,547,726 for career-technical capital outlay among listed institutions; and $10,500,000 for technical college operating grants. Committee staff described roughly $4,000,000 of reappropriations in the packet and said about $3,900,000 more would be required to fund an accelerating-opportunity program; staff summarized the net new adds as roughly $4,000,000 of net new spending with other amounts restoring previous allocations.

Representative Fairchild said the package was intended not to be an enhancement but to restore funding the two-year…