Supreme Court ruling on school funding case expected today

The Kansas Supreme Court is expected to release its ruling Thursday on whether the state provides adequate funding to schools.

An e-mail from the Office of Judicial Administration said the court will issue its decision shortly after 11 a.m. today.

A decision in favor of Wichita and the other school districts suing for more money would make it more difficult for state lawmakers to fill a projected budget hole and would increase pressure for a new formula that ensures adequate funding.

This year, the state faces a projected deficit of approximately $285- to $290 million. Shortfall estimates for the next two years are estimated to be $580 million and $170 million, although those figures are likely to change substantially depending on this year’s legislative actions.

The case that led to the Supreme Court decision was filed by four school districts – Wichita, Hutchinson, Kansas City and Dodge City – but decisions reached apply to all school districts across the state.

The districts claimed the state had failed its constitutional duty to provide “suitable” funding for public education on two counts: There wasn’t enough money overall, and what there was was inequitably distributed among districts.

The case, called Gannon v. Kansas, has been going on since November of 2010.

A special three-judge school finance court that initially tried the case ruled against the state and for the school districts. The state appealed to the Supreme Court.

Last year, the Supreme Court upheld part of the districts’ case and agreed that school funding was unfairly divided among wealthy and poor districts.

That forced Gov. Sam Brownback to call a special session of the Legislature in June to address the court ruling, or face a court-ordered shutdown of all school systems on July 1.

The Legislature responded by shifting $38 million around the state budget to comply with the court order.

Lawmakers also turned aside an effort to pass a constitutional amendment that would have stripped the court of its authority over school finance and left all school funding decisions to the Legislature and governor.

That kept the schools open for another school year, while justices contemplated the second part of the “suitable” equation, whether the state was providing enough money overall.

That’s the “adequacy” portion of the litigation that will be decided Thursday.

School finance has been a highly controversial issue in the state for 20 years or more, repeatedly ping-ponging back and forth to the courts and influencing state politics.

After last year’s special session, groups aligned with the governor tried to oust four Supreme Court justices who had sided with the school districts.

That would have slowed the case and given the governor the chance to appoint a court majority that might see things his way.

The effort failed when voters in the November election opted to retain all the current justices who were targeted – Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and associate justices Marla J. Luckert, Carol Beier and Dan Biles.

Those opposed to the Supreme Court’s rulings took another blow when Democrats and moderate Republicans, running on pro-school platforms, defeated or replaced about two dozen Brownback-allied legislators.

Even without the Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers would have no choice but to deal with school funding in the current legislative session.

Brownback and his allies in the Legislature successfully repealed the state’s school finance formula in 2015, replacing it with two years of “block grants.” That essentially froze funding at 2014 levels while loosening some rules on how districts can spend their state aid.

The idea was the Legislature would have two years to develop a new finance formula.

Those two years are up this year, meaning that the Legislature has to come up with a new formula for funding schools this year or risk shutting down the education system for lack of spending authority.

Unless lawmakers and Brownback restore the former school funding formula, which the Supreme Court had already approved as constitutional, whatever plan emerges from the Legislature is likely to face another round of litigation.

Thus far, Brownback seems unlikely to bend much on school funding and remains staunchly opposed to reinstating the previous school-finance formula.

In his annual state of the state speech, Brownback said the state’s students “suffered” under the previous formula.

He called it “overly complicated” and claimed it “lacked accountability for results, handcuffed local school boards, and spent money unrelated to student achievement.”

Brownback proposed several initiatives, including affordable internet access for all students, expanded scholarships for college students who agree to stay and teach in Kansas and relaxing teacher certification standards to make it easier for college graduates in other fields to transition to the classroom.

He also proposed expanding an existing program that gives tax breaks to businesses and individuals to fund scholarships for students to attend private and religious schools.

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 9:11 AM with the headline "Supreme Court ruling on school funding case expected today."