School districts around Kansas City know it’s possible, maybe even likely, that Missouri’s governor and lawmakers will choose to not fully fund public schools next year.
The state’s foundation formula, the calculation of how much money schools should receive, is enshrined in law. That doesn’t mean lawmakers always choose to provide the full formula amount, especially when money is tight. The most recent statewide school budget fell $190 million short.
Still, some local and statewide education leaders were caught off guard when the Missouri State Board of Education at its Sept. 15 meeting approved a budget request that didn’t even ask for the full amount required to fund the formula.
They said the decision is unprecedented, to their knowledge, and undersells how much money schools need according to the framework that the legislature itself created.
Instead, the state school board’s request asks the governor and the legislature to keep foundation formula funding flat compared to the current year’s already underfunded budget. That means that in the coming fiscal year, state school funding would fall more than $270 million under what is laid out in state law.
Hickman Mills Superintendent Dennis Carpenter said he’s disappointed by the board’s decision, suggesting the move gives lawmakers an easy pass to continue depriving Missouri schools of deeply needed resources.
It “makes it more likely that we’ll get less than we received last year, because we remove the ability to have a strong conversation about the foundation formula not simply being something that’s on a spreadsheet,” he said. “It represents what the state determined was necessary to effectively educate children.”
The latest decision is just one way school funding is “under assault” at the local, state and federal levels, Carpenter said.
Jackson County schools are preparing for property tax refunds to cut millions of dollars out of their budgets, and schools have seen federal funding delayed, cut or threatened.
“We keep asking the system to do more with less,” Carpenter said. “At some point, the system can’t function at a level that we all can be proud of.”
The board’s discussion
The decision came after the state board voted 4-4 on a budget recommendation that did include full foundation formula funding. The tie meant the proposal did not pass.
Democrats Jordan Bradberry and Vincent Schoemehl Jr., Republican Kerry Casey and Jon Otto, an independent, voted in favor of full funding. Republicans Kenneth “Brooks” Miller Jr., Michael Matousek and Robbie Myers, along with independent Gretchen Shull, voted no.
The board also has a new nonvoting member, Mike McDonald, who is a math teacher in the Park Hill School District.
Board members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate. Their political affiliations are reported because no more than four may belong to the same party.
Matousek, a member from Kansas City, called for the board to disregard the funding formula, arguing that the department shouldn’t request a funding increase at all while it lacks a strategic plan and a permanent commissioner.
“I think we’re asking for a lot of money without a real justification for spending it,” he said.
“This board, this department, has a credibility problem, and I think sending over a nine-plus billion dollar budget to people who make these decisions doesn’t help.”
He said that while state law requires the department to calculate the full foundation formula amount, it doesn’t require that the budget request match.
“I think we’re asking for money that doesn’t exist,” he said, alluding to a tightening state budget.
In June, Missouri Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick warned that the state’s general revenue surplus is being depleted.
Casey said it isn’t the board’s role to determine whether funding is available. That’s the responsibility of the state’s legislative and executive branches.
“It’s our job to present the need,” she said. The governor and legislature “are the ones to determine how that works in the scheme of all of the bigger priorities within the budget. That is not our job.”
After the tie vote, the board reached a compromise to leave in budget requests tied to new initiatives ordered by Gov. Mike Kehoe, the legislature or the courts. Those include a plan to grade public schools and districts on an A-to-F scale, new antisemitism reporting requirements and increased oversight of athletics.
It approved a nearly $4.3 billion request for the foundation formula, the same as formula spending in fiscal year 2027. That’s $270 million less than full funding for the formula.
McDonald clarified that the only change from the budget the board voted down was a cut to school budgets.
“I guess my concern is that the easiest place to cut is from the funding of the districts,” he said.
Local impact
Carpenter, whose south Kansas City district is digging itself out of a financial hole and fighting to earn full accreditation, said it’s striking that the board voted to underfund schools shortly after approving a framework to grade them on an A-to-F scale.
“I think it’s pretty interesting that we literally up the ante on accountability,” he said, “and we reduce the ante on the resources necessary to be successful.”
The foundation formula isn’t just his personal opinion about how much schools should receive, Carpenter said. “The state made that determination, and now we’ve gotten so comfortable with underfunding it that we’re now comfortable for not even asking for full funding.”
In the Lee’s Summit School District, about 28% of funding comes from the state, said Chad Hertzog, assistant superintendent of business services.
When state funding lags, the district has to rely even more on local funding, he said, including potentially raising residents’ property taxes. Once the district hits the tax rate ceiling set by voters, it has to reduce expenses such as by cutting supplies, services and staff.
The district could also ask taxpayers to raise the tax ceiling.
“It’s not (an option) that we like to consider because again, we’re asking our local voters to ultimately fund shortfalls at the state level at even a higher rate than they already are,” he said.
Hertzog said the district’s most pressing problem is Jackson County property taxes, but state funding reductions add to budget concerns. KCUR reports that the district is anticipating a revenue reduction of $7 million to $10 million this year after it reduced the tax rate in 2023 in response to growing property assessments.
The county has since determined that those assessments were handled incorrectly and is planning to refund money to taxpayers, cutting into schools’ revenue.
Hertzog said the difference between full formula funding from the state and what the district is actually receiving is nearly $7 million. The district’s overall operating budget is more than $280 million.
Carter Taylor, a Kansas City Public Schools elementary teacher and legislative chair of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers union, said the state board’s decision felt in line with “the current era in Missouri politics.”
“This is just another move that says public education doesn’t deserve support or funding,” she said. “It is another not-so-subtle attempt to say that we shouldn’t really exist.”
School districts’ percentage of state funding varies widely depending on factors such as the value of property that can be taxed locally. KCPS is one district that receives relatively little from the state, but Taylor said that every dollar counts.
“We take the least, and we try so hard to put in the most, but there’s only so much that a good teacher can do,” she said.
Matt Michelson, director of education policy for the Missouri State Teachers Association, said that even flat funding represents a practical decrease for schools as costs rise.
“I think all of us see in our daily lives everything is getting more expensive,” he said. Schools are “not immune to those increases in costs that everyone’s experienced over the last year,” including raises for teachers who also experience the effects of inflation.
Sarah Laub, a parent of two in the Blue Springs School District, said she’s concerned that state funding decisions could lead to her kids losing teachers and extracurricular activities. She’s also worried rural school districts — like the one she left in search of more educational opportunities for her kids in a better-funded district — could be hit the hardest.
Laub was referred to The Beacon by the Will of the People PAC, which aims to flip Missouri legislative seats. She also worked to oppose Amendment 5 with Parents for Missouri Public Schools based on its predicted impact on school funding.
She said the board’s decision should be seen in the context of a political climate where Kehoe and the legislature haven’t supported full school funding.
“It sounds like the board made their decision to not request that funding, not based on the belief that the schools don’t need it, but instead based on the belief that they no longer have faith that the lawmakers would listen to them or provide it,” she said.
But she thinks the board’s decision could contribute to lower school funding.
“I am concerned that this has created a vicious cycle where now the legislature will use it as a reason to cut even more funds,” she said.
The message to lawmakers and the public
Lindsey Baker, research director with the Missouri Budget Project, a center-left think tank, said there are plenty of historical examples of fully funding the state’s formula and the lack of full funding. But whatever the ultimate outcome, the education department always requested full funding from lawmakers.
“This is not something I have ever seen, certainly, and I’ve talked to many other people who have been around a lot longer than I have, who have never seen this before either,” Baker said.
“I think this is an indication that this is going to be a very painful budget year.”
Baker attributed state budget issues to years of tax cuts that she said have caused a “serious revenue problem.”
The board’s decision could have a mixed reception in the legislature, said Caitlin Whaley, senior director of advocacy for the Missouri School Boards’ Association (MSBA). Those against higher school funding might use it to their advantage, while others won’t be pleased.
“It certainly gives legislators something to hang their hat on if they can say, ‘Well, why should we fully fund it if the very board that we confirmed to oversee public education doesn’t think this funding is necessary?’” she said.
But “there are absolutely supporters of public education in the legislature,” she said, “that will now have a decidedly more negative view of the state board.”
Whaley said lawmakers shouldn’t be surprised by increased costs because the legislature had projections of the financial impact when they voted on the changes that have caused some of the increases to the foundation formula. Those changes include incentives for five-day school weeks and relying less on attendance when computing enrollment for funding purposes.
Attendance-based calculations of enrollment tend to penalize schools that have higher poverty rates.
A task force is working on a proposal to modernize Missouri’s school funding formula, which could further increase the cost of the formula.
Whaley said that as the budget process continues, MSBA will highlight stories of school districts that are facing budget challenges and emphasize that the state should fulfill its commitments.
“If we’re going to pass legislation that says we’re going to pay districts money, that we need to, as a state, be responsible for those decisions that are made,” she said.
In an emailed news release, Missouri Association of School Administrators Executive Director Mark Penny also criticized the board decision.
“This is a failure of the board’s most basic responsibility: advocating for Missouri’s public schools and the students they serve,” the statement read in part. “The board’s job is to tell the governor and the General Assembly what our schools need. Instead, this board has made the unprecedented choice to recommend that public schools remain underfunded, an action that reflects a board increasingly hostile to public education.”
Michelson said he’s not sure how legislators will respond, but he sees the recommendation as a poor start to the budget process.
“It sends a horrible message to our educators, our kids and our communities that the state board doesn’t believe that it’s necessary to even ask the legislature to fully fund our schools,” Michelson said.
