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 The court has given the Kansas legislature until July 1 to fully
fund its obligations for state school funding for the next year.
That amounts to at least $129.1 million, according to plaintiffs in
the case.
"This is a great win for Kansas kids," said attorney John Robb, who
represents the school districts, parents and students who brought
the case. "It means that the constitution actually has meaning for
kids in Kansas."
But while the court upheld part of a lower court finding in favor of
a group of public school districts claiming the state should provide
more money for education, the court also reversed part of that lower
court ruling. Some issues were remanded back for further review by a
district court panel, including whether or not the state is meeting
its duty to provide an adequate public education.
The lower court ruling, issued in January 2013, found Kansas was
short-changing its students, and rejected as illogical a state
argument that it could not afford increases in school funding at a
time when the state was cutting taxes.
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and Republican lawmakers have argued
that school funding levels should not be determined by courts but by
legislators.
The Kansas high court rejected that position, pointing to Article 6
of the state constitution, which says "the legislature shall make
suitable provision for finance of the educational interests" of the
state.
"The intent of the people of Kansas is unmistakable," the supreme
court said. "The Kansas constitutional command envisions something
more than funding public schools by legislative fiat."
The ruling Friday comes as Brownback's re-election campaign is under
attack by critics who say the sweeping tax cuts he has championed
have come at the expense of schools and poor residents who have seen
public assistance programs cut. Brownback and Republican legislators
have been slashing taxes in a professed bid to spur job growth in
the state.
The governor offered terse comments after the ruling.
"This is a complex decision requiring thoughtful review," Brownback
said in a statement. "I will work with leadership in the Kansas
Senate and House to determine a path forward that honors our
tradition of providing a quality education to every child and that
keeps our schools open, our teachers teaching and our students
learning."
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SEEKING "EQUITY"
In its ruling, the Kansas Supreme Court distinguished between the
"adequacy" of funding for schools and "equity" in such funding.
It found that the district court was wrong in how it determined
whether or not Kansas was meeting its duty for adequate funding of
public education and instructed the district court panel to revisit
that issue. The lower court had ruled that the state must provide at
least $4,492 per pupil annually for the state's roughly 600,000
students.
"Total spending is not the touchstone for adequacy in education,"
required by the state constitution, the supreme court said.
But on the equity issue, the court found that the district court
panel correctly determined that Kansas was acting
unconstitutionally, relying on "wealth-based" disparities to deny
certain school districts money they were entitled to.
The state historically has made state aid payments to certain poor
school districts through a capital outlay provision, but did not
authorize such payments for fiscal 2010 and lawmakers have
prohibited any transfers from the state's general fund for such
payments through the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016.
The supreme court said additionally that Kansas funding was improper
because the state had been pro-rating supplemental general state aid
payments, which certain districts were entitled to for their local
budgets.
Inequities in the state's funding must be cured so that school
districts have "reasonably equal access to substantially similar
educational opportunity through similar tax effort," the court said.
"Until recently, Kansas had an adequate school funding formula, but
that all changed when the state enacted a massive tax cut for the
wealthy and passed those costs on to low-income students," Wade
Henderson, president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human
Rights, said in a statement.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam; additional reporting by Kevin Murphy in
Kansas City; editing by Jon Herskovitz and Tom Brown)
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