Division of the Budget
Landon State Office Building Phone: (785) 296-2436
900 SW Jackson Street, Room 504 adam.c.proffitt@ks.gov
Topeka, KS 66612 Division of the Budget http://budget.kansas.gov
Adam Proffitt, Director Laura Kelly, Governor


February 3, 2022


The Honorable Kristey Williams, Chairperson
House Committee on K-12 Education Budget
Statehouse, Room 546-S
Topeka, Kansas 66612
Dear Representative Williams:
SUBJECT: Fiscal Note for HB 2551 by House Committee on K-12 Education Budget
In accordance with KSA 75-3715a, the following fiscal note concerning HB 2551 is
respectfully submitted to your committee.
Under current law, no school district can provide or offer more than 40 hours of remote
learning to any student enrolled in the school district. However, local boards of education can
authorize individual students to temporarily attend school through remote learning in excess of the
40-hour limitation when the student cannot reasonably attend in-person due to illness, injury, or
other extraordinary circumstance.
The law also allows the State Board of Education to authorize a school district to make
application to provide remote learning in excess of 40 hours in certain circumstances, including
disasters, conditions resulting from widespread or severe property damage caused by a disaster, or
other conditions restricting the operation of the school for an inordinate period of time. The law
defines any student who attends school through remote learning in excess of the 240-hour school
term limitation as a “remote learning student”.
The law requires each school district that offers remote learning, on or before June 30 of
each school year, to determine the remote enrollment of the district based on the number of
remotely enrolled students and for the clerk or superintendent of that school district to certify to
the State Board a report showing remote enrollment by the grades of the schools in that school
district. The State Board determines the number of remotely enrolled students by school district,
provides remote enrollment state aid of $5,000 per remotely enrolled student, and notifies each
school district of the amount of remote enrollment state aid. The law does not provide remote
enrollment state aid for students enrolled part-time in remote learning during the school day.
The Honorable Kristey Williams, Chairperson
Page 2—HB 2551

Under current law, the State Board requires each such school district to return any payment
over $5,000 (an overpayment) in the current school year for such students, or to deduct the excess
amounts over $5,000 to be paid to the school district from future payments to be made to the school
district. The law specifies that a remotely enrolled student is not included in the adjusted
enrollment of the school district for the current school year.
HB 2551 would state that no school district would be subject to the provisions of the
“remote learning” law and the Department of Education would not adjust the state aid of any school
district for the remote learning provisions.
According to the Department of Education, no school district has had a state aid reduction
as result from the “remote learning” law and it does not know of any school district that would be
affected during the 2021-2022 school year. As a result, the enactment of HB 2551 would have no
fiscal effect on current state aid payments to school districts, as reflected in The FY 2023
Governor’s Budget Report.


Sincerely,

Adam Proffitt
Director of the Budget

cc: Craig Neuenswander, Education


Statutes affected:
As introduced: 72-5180, 72-5132, 72-3712