Here's how Kansas audit is fueling debate over JUCO scholarships for out-of-state athletes

Hutchinson Community College, Butler Community College and Garden City Community College are all following Kansas law on funding for out-of-state student athlete scholarships, auditors announced recently.

Kansas lawmakers ordered an audit of the state's community colleges amid concerns from some that local tax dollars or other public money support scholarships for out-of-state students — as well as in-state but out-of-county students — at the expense of local high school graduates.

Rep. Kristey Williams, R-Augusta, requested the audit nearly two years ago to study community college spending on athletics, including the source of funds for scholarships to students not from the community. The nonpartisan Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit presented to the Legislature's audit committee on Wednesday.

"My goal in requesting this audit was to find out exactly where the students were from," Williams said. "Community colleges are heavily funded by property tax, which is a huge burden on 19 counties that their surrounding counties do not pay for."

She put an emphasis on ensuring compliance with state law, which bans community colleges from using public funds for any kind of scholarship to out-of-district students as well as athletic scholarships to any students.

"They can use fees, if the fees are approved by the local trustees and the student body ... but they shouldn't be using tuition, they shouldn't be using any state funds, they shouldn't be using any of our local property tax," Williams said.

Mohri Exline, supervisor of the audit team, said the audit confirmed that the colleges are following the law by not using public sources of funds to pay for athletic scholarships. The main source of funding for athletic scholarships is student fees, though in some colleges may also use revenue from booster clubs, endowments, ticket sales or concessions.

The Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference has 21 schools from Kansas, 19 of which are community colleges. The auditors focused on Hutchinson, Butler and Garden City community colleges for fiscal years 2018 through 2022.

Public dollars were used to pay for operational costs, like coach salaries, equipment and travel. But there was no way to track the precise sources of funds because the money all went into one account.

The audit indicates that most athletic scholarship dollars do go to out-of-state students, but it did not break down the in-state figures for athletes from the same county as the college.

"For my community college, it's 98% of those athletes are not from our resident district," Williams said. "For me, that's terribly sad, because you just don't have that community support or pride anymore because you don't know any of the kids.

"This is happening in all of our community colleges. When you have over 60% of your student athletes coming from outside of the state of Kansas, people don't, they're not interested, they don't know them."

Williams also suggested that if student fees weren't used for out-of-state athletic scholarships, they could be used for local student scholarships or to lower property taxes.

"While there may not be as many athletes from in-county as you would like, we try to get Kansas kids," said Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges.

She said there is a financial incentive to recruit in-state students because of state financial aid.

"We try to get the best Kansas athletes that we can," Morgan said. "We recruit hard. We recruit against each other. We recruit against K-State and KU. But then when we don't have a Kansas baseball pitcher — we got to have a pitcher for the baseball team — then we go to the next best available athlete."

Some lawmakers defended colleges for giving scholarships to non-local athletes.

One was Rep. Shannon Francis, R-Liberal, who is a graduate of Seward County Community College.

"All the time I was at that institution, we did the experiment of having extreme limitations on athletics at the school," he said. "I can just say that — as far as getting community support for donors, people interested in the scholarship foundation, school pride, recruitment of both local kids and kids in the area — it was disastrous. They tried for about four years, and after about four or five seasons of hardly winning a basketball game, it wasn't good at all for the institution."

Sen. Ethan Corson, D-Fairway, played baseball on scholarship at Garden City. He defended local interest and support in community college athletics, in-party by pointing to Butler County's football championships.

Butler has won six national championships, tied for the most nationwide. Its last was in 2008, and its last trip to the championship game was 2012. Garden City has won one championship, in 2016, and last played in the championship game in 2018. Hutchinson's one championship was in 2021, and played in the championship game in 2022.

"Butler County has won national championships in football, among other sports," Corson said. "There is tremendous interest in Butler County football and other programs because they are really one of the best programs in the country. I think that's really appealing to students, to the community. It enriches the student body.

"I would just question how much interest there would be from the community if you had an all in-district football team that was losing every single game. Because if you only had kids from in Butler County on the Butler County Community College football team, you would lose every single game."

He also questioned whether community colleges "could even fill rosters" using students only from their home district.

Williams said her brother played football at Butler.

"He would have never had a shot at playing football at Butler Community College today because there's not even one athlete from Butler County, or there might be one, and that to me is sad," she said.

Butler's 2023 online football roster lists 26 athletes from Kansas, but only one from Butler County.

Jason Alatidd is a Statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas audit fuels debate over JUCO scholarships for athletes