By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Children who come from low-income families, have disabilities, aren’t white or don’t speak English at home appear to be disproportionately paying the price of Kansas’ teacher shortage, according to an analysis by the Kansas News Service.

Particularly affected are Liberal, Garden City and Dodge City — southwest Kansas towns where most of the students come from low-income families and more than half face the added challenge of building math, literacy and other skills while acquiring English as a second language.

The state’s largest school district, Wichita Public Schools — another predominantly non-white district where three-fourths of the students come from low-income families — is struggling too, reporting nearly 80 unfilled positions as of early this school year.

“It does not lend itself to a fully functioning democracy to not have a strong public education system,” said Steve Wentz, president of the Wichita teachers union. “At some level, money and race is obviously an issue here that people don’t want to talk about.”

Debbie Mercer, dean of education at Kansas State University, said the disproportionate effect of teacher shortages on students in demographic groups that face academic achievement gaps is cause for concern.

About 110 of the 443 teacher and related vacancies reported statewide this school year for prekindergarten through 12th grade involved educating children who have disabilities or are learning English as a second language.

The dearth of special education teachers in particular has long been a problem.

“If we look at special education,” Mercer said, “we’ve known that’s been the No. 1 area of need for years.”

Hover over shaded areas on map to see information about teacher vacancies by Kansas school district.

 

 

Hiring challenges

The Kansas News Service obtained a breakdown of this year’s school vacancies through a data request to the Kansas State Department of Education. The list includes unfilled positions for teachers and some other personnel, such as counselors and psychologists.

Nearly half of vacancies at public school districts were concentrated in five districts where upwards of 70 or 80 percent of students come from low-income families:

• Wichita USD 259, 79 vacancies (compared to about 4,300 total certified staff last year).
• Garden City USD 457, 42 vacancies (about 615 total certified staff last year).
• Liberal USD 480, 29 vacancies (380 total certified staff last year).
• Kansas City Kansas USD 500, 29 vacancies (2,135 total certified staff last year).
• Dodge City USD 443, 22 vacancies (about 470 total certified staff last year).

David Smith, communications director for Kansas City Kansas Public Schools, said the district finds it challenging to attract qualified job candidates and compete with teacher salaries in wealthier areas of the Kansas City metro, making it harder to close achievement gaps.

“It’s one of the things we struggle with and why we fight so hard for equity,” he said. “If we’re serious about closing the achievement gap, then the resources need to be in the places where it’s possible to do that.”

Kansas has a goal of significantly boosting math and reading achievement and graduation rates for traditionally disadvantaged and underserved student groups with lower outcomes on those measures —such as black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, students from low-income families and English language learners. The state told the federal government this fall that it wants to close those gaps by 2030.

At the five higher-poverty districts, non-white students make up the majority, with Hispanic and black students being the largest ethnic and racial groups. Sixty-four percent of children in the Liberal district are learning English as a second language, as are 58 percent in Dodge City and 49 percent in Garden City.

“What you’re experiencing is being experienced across the country,” said Patricia Gandara, co-director of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. “We’ve always had a shortage of highly qualified teachers in the lowest-income schools.”

Gandara said nationwide, districts with more low-income and minority students are more likely to lack resources critical to successful schools.

Bearing the brunt

The Kansas education department began collecting more detailed information on vacancies in the past few years to investigate anecdotal reports that applicant pools were dwindling.

The list of 2017-18 vacancies backs that impression — as well as conclusions last year by a special task force that a relatively small number of urban or remote southwest Kansas school districts are bearing the brunt of the problem. Statewide, 99 percent of teaching jobs are filled.

View the task force’s report.

All but one of Kansas’ public school districts reported their vacancies to the education department this year, as did some private schools and interdistrict centers or similar entities that allow schools to share staff.

Geography likely compounds the problem. Sally Cauble, a Republican who represents 40 western Kansas counties on the Kansas State Board of Education, said districts struggle to attract candidates to the more sparsely populated half of the state, and the implications worry her.

“I believe that children are the future of your state,” Cauble said. “They’re your future workers, your future leaders.”

Schools often fill vacancies with long-term substitutes or teachers certified to teach other subjects, or redistribute students, resulting in larger class sizes. This spring, districts will report to the state how they dealt with this fall’s vacant positions.

Economic effects

The shortage also has implications for Kansas’ aspirations to bolster math and science education amid a national push to better prepare students for college and careers. This fall Kansas middle and high schools came up short about 70 math and science teachers.

“Literacy in all those fields for all people is critically important,” says Steve Case, who leads efforts at the University of Kansas to prepare more math and science teachers. “It drives our economic engine.”

Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson convened the 2016 task force on teacher supply. The panel suggested factors contributing to the situation could include low pay compared to the private sector, lack of mentoring for early-career teachers, low public esteem for the profession and Kansas’ lack of teacher job protections since 2014.

RELATED: Read about the ongoing Kansas Supreme Court battle over teacher tenure

The Kansas State Department of Education doesn’t yet have complete figures on teacher pay for this school year but estimates that it rose more than 4 percent if benefits such as health insurance are included. The increase came amid a boost in state funding for public schools, triggered by pressure from the Kansas Supreme Court.

Over the past several years, Kansas has seen a drop in college students pursuing and completing studies in education, as has the nation.

Though Kansas schools are still filling 99 percent of their instructional jobs, some superintendents across the state say the number of applicants has shrunk, leaving them fewer choices.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the GOP tax bill (all times local):

1:51 a.m.

The Senate has passed a nearly $1.5 trillion Republican tax bill that’s historic in scope and an urgent political priority for President Donald Trump and the GOP.

The vote was 51-49, largely along party lines. Not a single Democrat voted in favor of the legislation, which was crafted behind closed doors by Senate Republican leaders. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who calls the growing debt a national security threat, joined Democrats in opposing the bill.

The bill lays the bulk of its tax cuts on businesses and higher-earning individuals and gives more modest breaks to others.

It would bring the first major overhaul of the U.S. tax system in three decades. The measure must be reconciled with a version the House passed last month.

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1:35 a.m.

The Senate has voted to eliminate a tax break for a politically-connected conservative college in Michigan.

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon proposed the amendment to eliminate the tax break for Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. He noted that Hillsdale has connections to powerful Republicans, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Merkley says, “Isn’t that just the type of insider deal for the wealthy and well-connected that we should oppose?”

The Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax package would impose a new tax on investment income earned by some private universities and colleges.

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania added a provision exempting certain colleges that don’t receive federal funds. Democrats say Hillsdale was the only college that would benefit.

Merkley’s amendment was adopted by a 52-48 vote.

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1:20 a.m.

The Senate has given a green light to opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

In a vote early Saturday morning, Republicans rejected an effort led by Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state to block drilling.

The vote was 52-48. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has pushed for oil and gas drilling in the refuge.

Opening the remote refuge to oil and gas drilling is a longtime Republican priority that most Democrats fiercely oppose.

The 19.6-million acre refuge in northeastern Alaska is one of the most pristine areas in the United States and is home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife.

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12:20 a.m.

The Senate has adopted an amendment that would allow parents to use 529 college funds to pay private school tuition for students in kindergarten through high school.

Parents could also use the tax-exempt funds on home-schooling expenses.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas offered the amendment to Senate Republicans’ sweeping tax package. The vote was a 50-50 tie with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaker.

All Senate Democrats opposed the measure. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the only Republicans who voted against it.

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8:20 p.m.

Democrats have taken to the Senate floor to attack a planned amendment to the tax bill that would give a break to a conservative college in Michigan.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Patrick Toomey acknowledged he’d sponsored the language and said Hillsdale College would benefit from it.

Toomey defended Hillsdale as “a wonderful institution” and said other schools might qualify for the tax break, too. His provision would shield schools that receive no federal aid from language in the bill that taxes the investment income of some colleges and universities.

Democrats say Toomey’s provision was written in a way that only Hillsdale would qualify for the reduction. They complain that some well-known conservatives have connections to the school, including Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The highest court in Kansas has overturned a man’s 2013 kidnapping conviction in Shawnee County District Court after finding the prosecutor improperly commented about the alleged victim’s credibility to jurors.

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the prosecutor in the case of Osi Bisa McBride improperly urged the jury to presume the alleged victim was telling the truth, comparing it to the constitutional presumption of innocence given a criminal defendant.

McBride was originally charged with rape, aggravated kidnapping and two counts of criminal sodomy stemming from a 2011 encounter with a woman with whom he had an intermittent romantic relationship.

A jury deadlocked in his first trial. He was convicted on a lesser kidnapping charge in a second trial that also acquitted him of the remaining charges.

JEFFERSON COUNTY — Two people died in an accident just after 7a.m. Friday in Jefferson County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2015 Nissan Altima driven by Hannah Rose Stark, 31, Grantville, was northbound on Barton Road.

The driver failed to yield and U.S. 24 and struck an eastbound 1999 Ford Club Wagon that was driven by Gerald A. Baxter, 66, Clay Center on the right side.

The collision caused the driver to lose control and the vehicle rolled several times.

Baxter and a passengers Carla Rene Polson, 65, Blue Rapids, were transported to a  hospital in Topeka where they died.

Three others in the Ford including Ruth M. Baxter, 64; Robert Stewart, 61; Barbara Jean Stewart, 61, all of Clay Center were also transported to the hospital in Topeka.

Stark and two children in the Nissan were not injured.

Polson and Ruth Baxter were not wearing seat belts, according the KHP.

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GRANTVILLE, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say two people have been killed after a car clipped a van on a highway northeast of Topeka.

The crash happened Friday morning at an intersection along U.S. 24 near Grantville in southwest Jefferson County.

Lt. Adam Winter, of the Kansas Highway Patrol, says the van overturned, killing the driver and a passenger. Their names, ages and genders weren’t immediately released. Four others in the van were taken to a Topeka hospital, including one person flown there with critical injuries.

Winters says none of the three occupants in the car were seriously injured.

 

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — The trial of three men accused of plotting to bomb a Kansas mosque and an apartment complex housing Somali refugees has been put off until March.

U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren partially granted on Friday an unopposed defense request for the delay, setting the trial to begin March 19. The jury trial, which is expected to take about five weeks, had been previously scheduled to start in February.

A defense attorney sought more time to prepare his case, citing the government’s voluminous evidence.

Gavin Wright, Patrick Stein and Curtis Allen are charged with conspiring to detonate truck bombs at an apartment complex in the meatpacking town of Garden City in western Kansas. Wright also faces a separate count for allegedly lying to investigators.

They’ve pleaded not guilty.

WASHINGTON – A former Kansas bank executive was charged in an indictment filed today for his participation in a bank fraud scheme to obtain a $15 million construction loan from 26 Kansas banks based on allegedly false information contained in the loan documents.

Troy A. Gregory, 50, of Lawrence, Kansas, was charged in an indictment filed in the District of Kansas with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and two counts of false statements.

According to the indictment, Gregory was a bank executive and loan officer who had made millions of dollars in loans to a group of borrowers who were struggling to make payments on the loans.

The indictment alleges that beginning in approximately late 2007, Gregory began the process of making a $15.2 million construction loan to build an apartment complex to that same group of borrowers.  The indictment further alleges that Gregory’s bank shared this loan with 25 other Kansas banks.

Gregory allegedly made or caused others to make false statements to the banks about the strength of the borrowers, the debt status of the apartment property and the existence of approximately $1.7 million in certificates of deposit for collateral on the loan, all to get the loan approved.

Instead of using the loan funds promised for building the apartments, Gregory allegedly immediately diverted over $1 million of the loan to pay for part of the certificates of deposit pledged as collateral, pay off debt on the apartment property and make payments on unrelated loans.  Other Kansas banks that shared in this loan allegedly would not have participated in the loan without the false representations and promises.

The indictment alleges that the banks ultimately wrote off millions of dollars on the $15.2 million construction loan.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas is reporting that it collected $8.5 million more in taxes than anticipated in November.

It was the sixth consecutive month with higher-than-expected revenues.

The Department of Revenue reported Friday that the state collected $463.5 million in taxes last month. The official projection was $455 million, and the surplus is 1.9 percent.

It was the first monthly report on tax collections since state officials revised revenue projections Nov. 2. The state’s new fiscal forecast is more optimistic than the previous one issued in April.

Since the budget year began in July, the state has collected nearly $2.5 billion in revenues, also $8.5 million more than expected.

Tax collections this year are 11.7 percent ahead of last year’s collections. Lawmakers increased income taxes earlier this year to help balance the budget.

BUTLER COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities have completed an investigation of a suspicious vehicle following a Kansas girl home Thursday in Butler County.

Police reported Friday morning they were able, through some tips and leads from the public, to track down a local business that was doing a holiday scavenger hunt with their employees in the Crescent Lakes area.

There were 6 vehicles involved including a couple of white SUVs and multiple individuals. One of the items on the scavenger hunt list was a picture of a girl walking a dog. We had a similar incident in the green valley area where a group approached a women walking a dog, we started putting things together, and tracked down the business.

We have confirmed that the girl in the Crescent Lakes addition was actually walking her dog at the time of the incident and ran off when approached. The driver of the vehicle confirmed the child’s story. The local business has apologized directly to the family for some poor judgement by their employees.

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BUTLER COUNTY— Law enforcement authorities are investigating report of a suspicious vehicle following a Kansas girl home in Butler County.

Just before 5:00 p.m., Thursday, an 11-year old girl in the Crescent Lakes addition near the park at Westchester and Woodstone in Andover reported that while walking home she was followed by a man and a woman in a white SUV, according to a social media report from police.

At one point the vehicle pulled alongside her and the woman passenger in the vehicle opened the passenger door, at which point the child ran off.

Approximately 15 to 20 minutes later after arriving home the girl’s family contacted police. Officers immediately saturated the area but were unable to locate any suspects.

Police are looking for a white SUV driven by a white male, mid-40’s, thin build and bald. The passenger in the vehicle was a white female, maybe mid-40s, heavy set, shoulder length blonde hair, wearing a pink shirt.

USD 385 in Andover also notified parents about the Thursday night incident.

On Wednesday, Hutchinson police reported an attempted child abduction near Faris Elementary School. Police and USD 308 officials continue to investigate that incident.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Andover Police Department, 316-733-5177. Parents are encouraged to be vigilant and the police department will have extra officers in the neighborhoods over the next several days.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee has scheduled an afternoon conference and is expected to provide an update on its tumultuous, embarrassing search for a football coach.

The news conference will be led by Chancellor Beverly Davenport, not athletic director John Currie, who has been forced out according to multiple reports.

Currie served as Athletic Director at Kansas State from 2009 until taking over as Vice Chancellor, Director of Athletics in Knoxville in February.

Currie fired Butch Jones last month and was close to hiring Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano on Sunday. That deal fell through amid a public backlash. Currie met Thursday with Washington State coach Mike Leach in Los Angeles.

Reports this week linked Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy and Purdue’s Jeff Brohm to Tennessee’s vacancy, but both stayed put. North Carolina State’s Dave Doeren agreed to a new contract Thursday after speaking with Tennessee officials.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Court documents say a Kansas City man has been charged with killing his wife after the couple’s 7-year-old daughter told a school counselor that she had found a body and “didn’t want to be next.”

Forty-five-year-old Benjamin Byers was charged Thursday with second-degree murder, armed criminal action, abandonment of a corpse and child endangerment in the death of Melissa Byers. Bond is set at $500,000. No attorney is listed for him in online court records.

The probable cause statement says the girl last saw her mother alive Monday. The statement says she talked to a counselor Wednesday after finding “lots of blood” and a body with a “stab on the back.” The girl said her father had been acting “weird” and she didn’t tell him what she had seen because she “didn’t want to be next.”