Since Thursday was the last day for non-exempt bills to be heard by the full Senate, last week’s floor action was jam-packed.
The Senate passed a total of 56 bills last week.
The bills covered a wide range of Kansas topics including protecting women and children from human trafficking, providing funding for at-risk school children, holding DCF accountable for the educational outcomes of foster care children, and allowing sports wagering in Kansas-just to name a few.
In the Ways and Means Committee we are in the process of working on the Senate budget.
The Governor chose not to fund many of the enhancement requests from DCF and KDADS in her budget.
It is very disturbing to me that the Governor has again in this budget neglected the most vulnerable Kansans including the children in our foster care system.
One of the bills passed by the Senate was SB384, which will require DCF to provide information to the legislature, which will hopefully help to improve our foster care outcomes.
This bill was amended and will require the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) and the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to prepare an annual academic report card on educational outcome data for foster care students.
The bill would require the following data for foster care students to be included in the academic report card: graduation rate; number and percentage promoted to the next grade level; number and percentage suspended during the school year; number and percentage expelled during the school year; state standardized assessment scores and number and percentage meeting academic standards; number enrolled in preschool-aged-at-risk programs; Kansas Preschool Pilot program, or early childhood special education program under the federal individuals with Disabilities Act; total number of foster care students in the state; and how many students are enrolled in school districts and how many are enrolled in accredited nonpublic schools.
We continue to have many missing foster care children and we are still receiving reports of foster children sleeping on the office floors. Hopefully this bill will start to address some of the unanswered questions.
Several other bills of interest that were passed last week were:
* SB271 will repeal the sunset provision for the high-density at-risk weighting.
*SB294 would establish in 2021, new notice and public hearing requirements for certain taxing subdivisions prior to property tax increases above a revenue-neutral rate and is intended to provide transparency in tax increases for Kansans. This is a similar bill that has been used in Utah for 20 years. The bill would not apply to school districts or to any taxing subdivisions receiving less than $5,000 annually in property taxes. This bill also removes the tax lid.
*SB345 establishes requirements for the effective disposal of industrial hemp.
*SB295 would provide that the appraised value of real property would not be increased solely as a result of normal repair, replacement or maintenance of existing improvements on the property.
It is an honor and pleasure to serve the 40th Senate District of Kansas. Please do not hesitate to contact me by email at [email protected] or you may call me with your questions or concerns. My office number is 785 296-7399 or my cell number is 784 899-4700. If you are in Topeka, stop by my office at 236-E.