Weekly Update
This Week’s Highlights:
Top Story – Missouri Funding Task Force: The Missouri School Funding Modernization Task Force held its first full meeting of 2026, surfacing major design choices around funding targets and student counts — and the tension between building a durable formula and managing near-term budget constraints.
Missouri Update – Lawmakers heard two priority bills on A–F accountability and literacy. The hearings revealed broad agreement on outcomes-focused accountability and stronger reading policy, alongside debate over implementation and prescriptiveness.
Kansas Update – Kansas legislators took a closer look at how “at-risk” students are identified for funding, following a State Auditor report and testimony on SB 387 highlighting conflicts with federal free lunch rules and the limits of income-based verification.