KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced June 1 that she vetoed House Bill 2510.
Citing the looming budget shortfall caused by COVID-19, Kelly said at the time she “cannot in good conscience sign a bill establishing a new discretionary spending program that is unrelated to Kansas COVID-19 response efforts.”
Kelly resurrected one part of that doomed legislation Tuesday by executive order.
Executive Order 20-53 establishes an education report card for students in the Department of Children and Families’ foster-care system, which will track student outcomes and provide data to help improve education of foster children in Kansas.
“This executive order is another step my administration is taking to improve outcomes for vulnerable children in the foster care system,” Kelly said in a statement announcing the executive order. “Education is key to a strong future workforce in Kansas. This report will help us track educational outcomes of all Kansas students in foster care — which will in turn help Kansas’ vulnerable families and make our public education system more accountable.”
The report card, which will be published annually by Jan. 15 each year, will track graduation and grade-promotion rates, suspensions and expulsions of foster children, standardized test scores, the number of foster children enrolled in preschool at-risk programs and mental health programs as well as percentages of foster children in districts.
The data, which will not be identifiable to individual children, will be further broken down by race and ethnicity with additional data sets possible if the Kansas State Department of Education or DCF requests it.
DCF Secretary Laura Howard praised the decision in a statement from Kelly’s office.
“I have long supported the idea of a foster care report card because I believe that a child’s success in education is a predictor for their success in life,” Howard said. “The Department for Children and Families has already engaged with the Department of Education to begin gathering data. I look forward to seeing where the data leads us so we can identify ways in which both agencies can support foster youth in meaningful ways that ensure their wellbeing.”
When Kelly vetoed House Bill 2510 last month, she said she would have signed aspects of the bill, including the foster-care report card and a provision for free ACT exams for high school students, “if they were presented in a standalone bill.”
