Category: Wichita and Kansas schools

  • Karen Walker for Wichita school board

    Karen Walker is a strong candidate for board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district. Her commitment to fiscal responsibility is refreshing. With training and experience in accounting and auditing, she will help hold down costs plus provide transparency about where our tax dollars are being spent in Wichita schools.

  • Wichita school board members should not be re-elected

    Next Tuesday, four members of the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, seek to be elected again to their current posts. These members — Lanora Nolan, Lynn Rogers, Connie Dietz and Betty Arnold — are part of a board and school district that is increasingly out-of-step with education reforms that are working…

  • KNEA, the Kansas teachers union: more taxes are needed

    The public education spending lobby in Kansas is always looking for more tax dollars. A recent edition of the Kansas National Education Association newsletter Under the Dome for March 30, 2009 lays out the education spending lobby’s plans.

  • Wichita school board of education campaign contributions

    Recent campaign finance reports filed by candidates for the board of USD 259, the Wichita public school district, show some contributions that may be of interest to Wichita voters.

  • In the Wichita school district, supplies must be really tight

    Two questions: With $13,000 to spend each year per pupil, why do teachers have to spend their own personal money on supplies? Does the Wichita school district really have to rely on the teachers union for supplies such as paper?

  • Barb Fuller: Feds should pay, and leave us alone

    In an op-ed piece printed in the Wichita Eagle (“Barb Fuller: Feds should facilitate, not dictate, on education,” February 20, 2009 Wichita Eagle, no longer available online), Wichita school board vice president Barb Fuller makes, indirectly, the case that the U.S. Federal government should fund education, but keep its nose out of how local school…

  • KNEA doesn’t care for Proposition K

    You can often tell how good a measure will be for taxpayers and prosperity by how strongly the people who live on government spending protest. When they distort arguments to the point of lying, you know it’s going to be really bad for them if a measure passes — and really good for everyone else.…

  • Wichita homeless schoolchildren count exaggerated

    When an institution needlessly exaggerates the severity of a situation, it diminishes the plight of the true problem. That’s the case with USD 259, the Wichita public school district, when it reports that 1,200 Wichita schoolchildren are homeless.

  • Some Wichita school district promises aren’t important, it seems

    A Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog post doesn’t consider the obvious solution to a problem. At issue is the state of Kansas’ “promise” to help local school districts pay for school bonds.

  • For Wichita school contracts, it helps to pay

    USD 259, the Wichita public school district, has recently decided on some architects to award contracts to for work funded by the 2008 bond issue. Citizens might have wondered why so many architectural and construction firms had such a high degree of interest in public schools. But these firms know that if you want to…

  • Kathy Cook of Kansas Families for Education: ‘Do as I say, please’

    At the federal level, we’ve seen a few examples of big-taxing Democrats who don’t pay their own taxes. Some of this might be explained by the complexity of the federal tax code. But local property taxes are pretty easy to handle. There’s no return to file. The county sends you a bill, and you pay.…

  • Kansas school lobby: not enough spending, not enough taxation

    In Topeka, the Kansas Association of School Boards rarely misses an opportunity to complain that spending on government schools is too low. The same goes for the Kansas National Education Association, the teachers union.