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Kansas Regents Board Cuts Funds to Three Schools

Posted on: Friday, 22 July 2005, 00:00 CDT

Jul. 21--The Kansas Board of Regents implemented a new accountability system Wednesday by withholding funds from three schools that failed to meet their performance targets.

The Northeast Kansas Technical School in Atchison will receive only 80 percent of new funds allocated this year by the state Legislature, said Kip Peterson, the regents' director of government relations and communications.

And Colby Community College in Colby and Southwest Kansas Technical School in Liberal will not receive any new funds.

The state's other higher education institutions, including the University of Kansas and Kansas State University, met their goals and will receive all of the new funds to which they are entitled.

Under the accountability system, which the regents and Legislature set up in 2002, the regents entered into performance agreements with each institution. The annual agreements hold each school accountable in several measurable areas. The amount of new funding each school receives depends on its degree of compliance.

Mike Rogg, president of Northeast Kansas Technical School in Atchison, said his school was unable to enter into as many training contracts with high schools as it had hoped because the Legislature was late in appropriating money for schools. The high schools did not want to commit to the training contracts until after they knew what their budgets would be, he said.

Instead of receiving $38,000 in new funds, Northeast will receive about $31,000, Rogg said.

The regents wanted institutions to establish "stretch goals" that might be difficult to attain, Rogg said. Northeast wants to meet those goals and will continue working to do so, he said.

"It's a good goal to have," he said, "and we need to be doing it anyway whether there are performance agreements or not."

Money withheld this year will be added back into an institution's budget the following year, so it will not permanently lose the funding.

Colby Community College fell short of a goal to place students properly in certain classes, according to a report from the regents. And Southwest Technical did not submit an acceptable performance agreement, the report said.

The nine-member Board of Regents governs the state's six public universities and supervises and coordinates the state's 19 community colleges, four technical schools, six technical colleges and a municipal university.

The Higher Education Coordination Act of 1999, which brought the latter schools under the board's purview, called for greater performance accountability.

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Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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