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KMUW’s Engage ICT brings our community together with thoughtful conversation. Each month we take a deep dive into a major topic with a panel of local experts, and live stream our hour-long conversation at engageict.org and KMUW’s Facebook page. Since 2016 we’ve covered a myriad of topics, from healthcare to homeschooling, immigration to environmentalism.Engage ICT is sponsored by Keith Stevens with InSite Real Estate Group.

Engage ICT: Education

February 9, 2016 at The Monarch.


KMUW’s second Engage ICT: Democracy On Tap event brought together a panel of experts on education in Kansas and at the federal level.

The audience at the Monarch in Delano heard about everything from Common Core to student loan debt to state funding and the challenges facing teachers in Kansas’ public school system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLzf01AZaXytWjL004BW0ejFkM_NXFYTuD&v=uZDSfuUR0r0

“It’s absolutely critical that as a community we engage around the topic of education,” said Wichita Public Schools Superintendent John Allison. “It’s really the linchpin in a foundation of where we will go as a city, and is a prime factor in the economic development that we hope to see in the future.”

WPS employs about 9,000 people and educates more than 51,000 children, said CFO Jim Freeman—a number unmatched by any other school district in Kansas. Education makes up roughly half of the state’s budget, but panelists say lawmakers are siphoning funds away from the education system.

Allison said education can’t look today like it did decades ago when he was in school. In 1940, 28 percent of the population had a high school diploma. By 2005, 89 percent did. He said Kansas educators have put a major focus on systemic reform and on literacy.

“The types of jobs that folks get today…to be able to support a family won’t work on a 1940s education or a 1950s or a 1970s,” he said. “The bar has continued to be elevated on what we expect students to know, how we expect them to apply that knowledge. We’re preparing students for future jobs that don’t even exist today.”

But that systemic reform isn’t coming easy, especially with budget cuts facing the district and others in the state. The state’s new block grant funding model has been challenged in the state Supreme Court for being inequitable, and WPS is “still uncertain of our funding there,” Freeman said.

Funding cuts are affecting higher education as well, said Sheelu Surender, director of financial aid at Wichita State University. She said every year there’s “less and less state funds” available for students in need of financial assistance.

Aside from funding cuts, David Kirkbride, UniServ director of the South Central Kansas National Education Association, said another challenge facing the state’s education system is the misinformation surrounding Common Core state standards, which he said have been used as “a political football.”

“I’m very concerned about public education,” he said. “I think public education is the backbone of a democratic society.”

Allison said that when most voters hear about legislation, it’s a done deal “by the time they even realize what’s happening.” Still, Freeman noted that he and Allison been having more conversations with legislators than they have in the past.

“We are starting to have an ear,” he said. “Wichita has a lot of influence at the legislative level, but sometimes we do not leverage that like we need to.”