Category Archives: Education

In 2012, enacted SB 155 launched a new plan to enhance career technical education (CTE) in Kansas with the purpose of better preparing high school students for college and careers. Beginning with the 2012-2013 school year, Kansas high school students could qualify for free college tuition in approved technical courses offered at Kansas technical and community colleges. The program also initially provided school districts with a $1,000 incentive for each high school student who graduated from that district with an industry-recognized credential in a high-need occupation.

KSA 76-147 allows the The Kansas Board of Regents (Board) to acquire land for building or utility construction; however, there is no required notification to the Legislature in taking this action, nor is there a statute regarding the acquisition of buildings. The Board policy states that state universities may acquire real property necessary to properly maintain and carry on a state university or the business thereof.

This memorandum provides an overview of the Mental Health Intervention Team Pilot Program created by the 2018 Legislature. The overview includes recent legislation, a program overview, fiscal information through FY 2023, and school district participation through school year 2020-2021.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged in the 1970s as a legal theory in response to what some viewed as a stalling of the civil rights movement. Over the years, CRT grew and evolved, with several scholars, including Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic, Patricia Williams, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Tara Yosso, credited as originators along with Bell and Freeman by the American Bar Association.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines CRT as “a group of concepts used for examining the relationship between race and the laws and legal institutions of a country and especially the United States”; and also as “a movement advocating the examination of that relationship.” CRT, unlike other legal scholarship, allows for the notion of storytelling, to provide context and understanding. These three themes—racism as a structural issue, critique of liberalism in failing to meet the needs of Black Americans, and storytelling—allow the audience to best distinguish CRT from other scholarship.

However, as CRT is a constantly developing area, it is not limited to those three themes.

The 2021 Legislature passed HB 2134, which included several policy provisions and appropriations for the State Department of Education for FY 2021, FY 2022, and FY 2023.

The bill also included provisions related to “remote learning,” defined as a method of providing education in which a student regularly enrolled in a school district does not physically attend the attendance center where the student would otherwise attend in-person on a full-time basis, and the instruction is prepared, provided, and supervised by teachers and staff of such school district to replace the instruction that would have occurred in the attendance center classroom.

Virtual schools are excluded from the remote learning definition and provisions.