As governor, he would advocate restoring aid to the public schools of Kansas that was taken from them because of the recession, Sen. Tom Holland told a Register reporter Thursday.
Sen. Holland, a Baldwin Democrat, said that he had supported raising the sales tax by a penny this year to keep school financing from being slashed still farther, to make a new10-year highway program possible and to balance the state budget.
“I think my opponent, Sam Brownback, wants to take school financing back to the days when it depended largely on the property tax. He has said he wants a new formula, but he hasn’t given the people of Kansas any details. All we can go by is proposals by other Kansas Republicans in the Legislature who want to do away with the weightings in the formula. That would be a disaster for the schools in Allen and most other Kansas counties,” he said.
Holland said the Kansas economy has begun to recover and that tax revenues to the state are again coming in above estimate. He thought the surplus might now be in the $40 million range.
“What I would say to the Legislature that as the economy grows and state revenues grow that school funding would grow right along with it. I also would like to see the funding of the state’s universities to be restored so that tuition could be lowered and more Kansas young people could be given an opportunity to succeed through higher education,” he said.
Holland advocates bolstering the state’s vocational schools and establishing programs to qualify Kansas workers for the jobs that are available.
“That is a practical way to grow the economy faster, to provide jobs for the unemployed, to speed up recovery,” he said.
Holland keeps focus on schools
