Elevating Extension: Moving Forward
June 9, 2026
Submitted by Gregg Hadley
The first half of 2026 has been interesting to say the least. As many of you know, the State Finance Council passed our budget last Wednesday. This enabled us to receive the $21.5 million dollars that was temporarily withheld from us. While that is good news, the hard work is just beginning.
While there will still be discussions with members of the legislature to clarify aspects of the plan, here is a summary of what we need to do:
- Provide greater accountability: We need to further demonstrate that we are a great investment of public dollars.
- Increase our relevance: We need to show that we are responding to Kansas issues in a timely, nimble and effective manner.
- Be true to core: We need to ensure that while we are serving Kansans in various ways that we remain true to our core programmatic areas of agriculture and natural resources, 4-H youth development, family and consumer sciences and community vitality.
Some of our response to these concerns will be to:
- We will be emphasizing programmatic reviews more closely to assure that local units and departments are delivering on needs and that the extension appointments are invested appropriately.
- We will continue to encourage more districting and multicounty partnerships. A question was asked recently about new districting and partnering activities. This increases our opportunity to increase our relevance through expertise specialization.
- We will be developing an expanded regional specialist network based on regional need to ensure that expertise gaps can be addressed in a more nimble and rapid fashion.
We will not be able to do this overnight. What can you do in the meantime? As always, the best thing you can do is to make sure that you are effectively meeting the programmatic needs of the Kansans you serve.
Second, you need to do even more with regard to recording your impact and communicating your impact to your stakeholders, especially elected officials.
Regarding communicating to elected officials, this year we will be developing and implementing a series of regional road shows between election day and the December holidays. At these roadshows, we will be highlighting the great work we do and engaging the elected officials on what else we can be doing for Kansans.
We will be putting teams together to contribute to the planning and implementation of the road shows, so be ready to volunteer when the opportunity arises!
***
