A draft of cost-savings proposals prepared for consideration by the K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission suggests members should consider several proposals, including offering school districts incentives to merge or cooperate. Another proposal would change the traditional teacher salary schedule, which ties pay to education and years of experience, to a salary range that takes into account experience and area of expertise.

Legislators created the commission this year, tying it to a proposal increasing aid to poor school districts by $129 million for this school year in order to meet the Kansas Supreme Court’s mandate in March’s education funding lawsuit decision.

Members of the commission include superintendents, former state senators, principals and the former chairman of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce. It is separate from an efficiency taskforce created by Gov. Sam Brownback in 2012 and filled mostly with accountants.

Both the commission and the issue of school consolidation have become talking points in the gubernatorial campaign this month, as Brownback attacked Democratic candidate Paul Davis over comments that Davis’ committee appointee, John Vratil, made in a 2011 article in The Topeka Capital-Journal about rural Kansas population decline. Vratil, a Republican who is a former vice president of the Kansas Senate, predicted that “rural school districts will be starved out of existence.”

The Brownback campaign sent mailers warning Kansas residents of the “Davis-Vratil Education Agenda: CONSOLIDATION.” Davis has said he opposes forcing small districts to consolidate and Vratil had said there was nothing in the 2011 story to suggest he sought forced consolidation.

The controversy also has drawn attention to Republican House Speaker Ray Merrick’s appointment of Dave Trabert to the efficiency commission. The Wichita Eagle has reported that Trabert, president of conservative think-tank Kansas Policy Institute, wrote in a 2010 report that, “Consolidation of extremely small districts is not a popular topic for discussion, but one that should occur.”