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Task force reviews alternative weightings for at‑risk, bilingual and enrollment in school finance models
Summary
Research staff presented a suite of model options that would alter how Kansas distributes at‑risk, bilingual and enrollment funding: alternatives include moving away from free‑lunch proxies toward Title I, state assessment performance or Census poverty, a new "success" weighting for proficient students, and density models for enrollment. Members requested audits, district-level runs and headcount/FTE/density data.
Research staff gave detailed technical briefings on alternative formula models that would change how state aid is computed and distributed.
Jennifer Light (KLRD) summarized at‑risk options ranging from removing the at‑risk weighting entirely to rolling it into base, to replacing the free‑lunch proxy with Title I percentages, state assessment counts (level 1 or levels 1 and 2), USD poverty from Census small‑area estimates, or hybrids averaging poverty and assessment measures. She told members the current at‑risk calculation "uses free lunch ... and that is used with a weighting of 0.484." Multiple alternative multipliers were cited in staff models (examples in the packet include 0.597 and 0.299 for assessment‑based versions and 1.766 for a poverty‑based normalizer to keep total state aid roughly constant).
Matthew Willis described a family…
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