Mike Dodson is Out of Touch, Votes Along Party Line
Did you know that Rep. Dodson voted yes to fully fund special education and then 22 minutes later, he revoked his yes vote and VOTED NO? Kansas GOP leadership blocked their members from doing the right thing—fully funding our schools given the budget surplus Kansas was privileged to spend. Instead of standing up for public education, Mike Dodson fell in line.
At the League of Women Voters forum on Sunday, October 9th, Rep. Mike Dodson and I had the opportunity to face off on the issues. In the video clip below, I defend Manhattan parents and their involvement in our kids’ education.
Mike Dodson is out of touch with Manhattan families. He’s too far removed from the realities and challenges that families are facing.
“The third thing, and the thing I think most importantly, we’re going to have to make sure that parents are involved. ... We can’t just drop the kids off and hope for the best.”
“I am now a parent of a child in our public education system, and I can tell you it is hard to find slots for parent-teacher conferences because parents are involved.”
Here is the transcript:
Mike Dodson:
I’d say there’s probably at least three issues. One is right now, facing us, is I’d say we gotta catch up the kids from the pandemic. They’re lagging behind and teachers worked really hard and somehow, we’ve got to find a way to break through that. The Gannon decision established the school funding formula. That formula escalates with inflation each year. Whether that’s adequate or not, we’ll leave it to the courts, and hopefully stay out of court. Just like Representative Carlin said. About 5.2 to 5.5 billion dollars a year. Special ed is not funded properly. It’s funded, it’s supposed to be 92%. The feds are supposed to pay 40%. And they don’t do it. That means that the local school district has to use their local operating budget and that’s not very flexible. The third thing, and the thing I think most importantly, we’re going to have to make sure that parents are involved. It takes this big team. It takes the administrators, the teachers, the kids, and the parents all to make this thing work. We can’t just drop the kids off and hope for the best. This is a community activity and it needs to be practiced. So when I talk to our administrators out here, one of the things they always tell me is that they have burnout. You know, my two oldest daughters are teachers up in Seattle. One of the things they have to cope with is learning a system to export to those students and learning it in about 15 to 20 days so that they could make sure that when the doors opened remotely, they were able to teach. And they’re both very tired.
Kim Zito:
There’s a lot of things that we need to address with education and a lot of it has to do with a new economy and a new world that we live in, in terms of sociological changes. Um, funding, yes! We need to fully fund our schools and that includes fully funding special education. There was an amendment to the K-12 budget last year that would’ve added $68 million to the budget to fully fund special education. Our current representative voted yes on this. I commend that. Twenty-two minutes later he voted no. Special education is not fully funded and it took 22 minutes for someone in the House to wrangle in his caucus members and make them fall in line. That is not how we represent Manhattan. This community values public education. This is a community where you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a PhD. And it is because of that that we have parents who are involved in their children’s education, and to suggest anything else I find insulting. I am now a parent of a child in our public education system, and I can tell you it is hard to find slots for parent-teacher conferences because parents are involved. And when we pass a Parents Bill of Rights that will allow parents to sue a school district for $15,000, that is egregious and that does not make teachers want to teach. And our current representative did say yes to the Parents Bill of Rights.