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Board of Regents presses budget priorities: literacy coaching, need-based aid and $1.6B deferred maintenance backlog
Summary
Kansas Board of Regents President Blake Flanders and fiscal analyst Dayton Lemunyan briefed the Committee on Higher Education Budget on KBOR—s FY26-FY27 budget, detailing reappropriations (~$26.7M), deleted enhancement requests (energy projects, student success initiatives), governor—s adjustments (including $8.6M for the blueprint for literacy) and a campus restoration and deferred maintenance portfolio totaling roughly $1.6 billion.
Dr. Blake Flanders, president of the Kansas Board of Regents, told the Committee on Higher Education Budget that KBOR—s unified appropriation request emphasizes student success, campus restoration and targeted workforce programs while keeping the overall SGF ask to roughly a 1% increase.
"Majority of Kansas students are not reading at grade level, 55.5%," Flanders said as he urged continued investment in the statewide Blueprint for Literacy initiative. He described the blueprint as a large workforce development effort and said his board recommended $5.5 million while the governor—s recommendation included an $8.6 million adjustment to add coaching.
Dayton Lemunyan, principal fiscal analyst with the Kansas Legislative Research Department, walked the committee through KBOR—s budget pages. He reported roughly $26.7 million in unspent FY26 funds the agency reappropriated (largely scholarships), listed transfers (the education building fund and Kansas Campus Restoration Act distributions) and noted that the special budget committee deleted several enhancement requests, including three $5 million energy projects and student-success enhancements.
Flanders also flagged capital and deferred-maintenance issues: KBOR identified roughly 451 "mission critical" buildings with an estimated backlog of about $1.6 billion and 20.5 million square feet of space that will require reinvestment. He said the restoration act and education building fund are significant components of addressing that backlog and emphasized that inflation and construction cost increases make deferred work more expensive.
On need-based aid, Flanders said the board—s modeling showed consequences to moving flexible need-based funds away from KBOR administration; he reported the FY25 need-based awards count and said transferring funds could reduce awards by several thousand students in FY27. Committee members asked clarifying questions about the governor—s adjustments and whether specific items were lapsed by the special budget committee; Dayton and Flanders explained differences between agency submissions, board-approved lists and the special budget committee—s deletions.
The committee requested the KBOR slide decks and statutory references (including the Higher Education Coordination Act of 1999) be provided to members and scheduled further budget deliberations for the coming week. No formal appropriation votes occurred during this meeting.
