Approved school funding plan may be ‘equitable,’ but what about ‘adequate’?

Kansas schools will stay open next month after unprecedented collaboration between lawmakers and school district officials appears to have resolved a constitutional crisis, at least for now.

A school finance plan passed with overwhelming bipartisanship Friday ensures equitable funding, attorneys for Wichita and other plaintiff school districts say.

“They agree that this settles the equalization piece of the lawsuit, so I will sign it and this will be finished,” Gov. Sam Brownback said.

This most likely resolves a standoff between the Legislature and the Kansas Supreme Court, which had threatened to cut off funding for schools if lawmakers did not address unconstitutional inequities in school finance by June 30.

The bill takes $38 million from a variety of sources and puts it toward equalization aid for property-poor school districts, which are unable to raise as much from local property taxes as property-rich districts. Wichita stands to gain more than $10 million in additional state aid.

All sides are claiming victory and it looks like there’s a temporary ceasefire in the school finance wars that have dominated Kansas politics in recent years. But there’s still a bigger fight ahead over whether school funding is adequate.

Alan Rupe, the districts’ attorney, said in an e-mail that plaintiffs have agreed to join the state in asking the court to find that the bill satisfies the equity test.

“Then, we can move on to adequacy,” he added.

‘Equitable’ and ‘adequate’

In school finance, the court has ruled the Legislature has to do two things to meet its constitutional burden of providing “suitable” funding of public education.

School funding has to be “equitable,” meaning fairly distributed between the state’s rich and poor, urban and rural school districts.

It also has to be “adequate,” meaning there has to be enough money overall to provide the state’s students with a 21st century education.

The court has yet to rule, or even take oral arguments, on the larger question of whether the Legislature is providing adequate funding to schools.

And that could be hundreds of millions of dollars instead of the tens of millions on the line in the equity portion of the case.

An inkling of things to come emerged in the House Democratic caucus meeting just before the final House vote on the equity package.

“I understand that the plaintiffs will be dismissing the portion of the lawsuit that involves equity,” said Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita.

However, he added, “The adequacy portion? Oh yeah, we’re coming back.”

Finding compromise

The final bill on equity was the product of input from lawmakers across the political spectrum and from multiple school districts, including Wichita, who had engaged in a series of meetings with Republican leaders before and during the two-day special session.

“I think the dialogue that continued beyond the first day was critically important,” said Todd White, the superintendent of the Blue Valley school district. “And the collaboration and compromise continued and we have, what I think, is a better product than what we came in with.”

It was a rare feat at the Capitol, where the education community is often at odds with state policymakers.

Diane Gjerstad, a spokeswoman for the Wichita school district, said that “the really positive thing that came out of this is that people kept talking to each other and kept working through and coming up with a compromise that worked.”

Rep. Ron Ryckman, R-Olathe, the House budget chairman, who led those discussions, said that the strengthened relationships between lawmakers and school officials will be important next year when lawmakers have to craft a new school finance plan, regardless of how the court rules.

Ryckman discarded an earlier plan that would have cut schools’ general funds to pay for the equity fix, after facing pushback from districts and from moderate Republicans and Democrats. He agreed to pursue the alternative plan that kept K-12 funding largely intact aside from a small cut to virtual school funding and the use of emergency funds.

‘Very tight budget’

There’s still some uncertainty about whether the state will be able to fund the plan in the face of its narrow budget margins.

“I think we’ll be able to fund it because most of it’s in various places now, but it’s a very tight budget,” said Brownback.

The bill promises that if the sale of the assets of the Kansas Bioscience Authority, which lawmakers voted to dissolve earlier this year, brings in more than the expected $25 million, any excess funds will go to the school finance fix.

However, Brownback said he does not expect that to happen, meaning that alternative funding sources will have to be used.

“I wouldn’t be particularly confident of that at all. But there’s another piece if it doesn’t click in,” Brownback said. “That’s not the sort of estimates I’ve been seeing as far as the price tag on KBA, but who knows? I just wouldn’t be confident it’s going to come in higher than $25 (million).”

The back-up if the KBA sale falls short is to empty out the entirety of the K-12 extraordinary needs fund, a pool of money intended to help districts cope with unforeseen costs, and take $5 million from the Kansas Department of Transportation’s motor vehicle fee fund, which otherwise goes to highway projects.

Relief over results

Despite the uncertainty over long-term funding, educators expressed relief with the results.

“We’re happy that schools are going to be open. It’s that simple,” said Marcus Baltzell, spokesman for the Kansas National Education Association. “We’ve been calling for this for a long time – as have all these other parent and teacher groups – so we’re thrilled that schools will be open for Kansas students, but, you know, it happened through compromise, collaboration.”

Democrats, who make up less than a fourth of the House, savored the special session as a rare chance to be on the winning side.

“This is one of those victories I think we will cherish for a while,” said House Minority Leader Tom Burroughs, D-Kansas City. “We haven’t had many of those, but I’m extremely proud of the work that’s come out today.”

Republicans, who initially balked at the court ruling, similarly took a victory lap.

“Even plaintiffs’ attorneys agreeing for the first time in the known history of school finance litigation that the Legislature has fully complied, that's pretty good,” said Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, who served as the state’s attorney in a previous school finance case.

A few GOP members still lamented the decision to comply with the court ruling. Rep. John Rubin, R-Shawnee, who is retiring from the Legislature, said that lawmakers had sent a message that they’re subservient to the court by not defying the order.

Special session

Politically, the special session had something for everyone. For a couple days, lawmakers from both parties found something they could agree on – their own political survival.

Democrats have staunchly defended the Supreme Court’s use of a potential school closure as leverage to get the Republicans to cut loose the funding for equity.

And Republicans have attacked the court for what they perceived as a huge judicial over-reach and in general made no secret of their hope that voters would turn out justices who participated in the case when they come up for retention votes in November.

A constitutional amendment that would have limited the court’s ability to rule in future school finance cases fell one vote short of passage on the Senate floor and was never taken up by the House, which Brownback called a disappointment.

But in the end, neither side wanted to go into the August and November election cycle as the politicians who were there the day the schools shut down.

Now that’s off the table. The fight over adequacy will almost certainly come after the election.

“Now we go home and campaign,” said Rep. Blake Carpenter, R-Derby. As for the upcoming battle of adequacy, he said “I think you’ve got to take it one step at a time.”

Rep. Steve Anthimides, R-Wichita, said the equity solution came from “good, solid, bipartisan” work.

“We did something pretty rare,” he said. “We compromised.”

He said he hopes that can continue through the adequacy portion of the court case and whatever comes after the Supreme Court issues its decision.

“We’ve proven we can work together as a team,” he said, adding that that’s why the voters send representatives to the Capitol in the first place. “Our main job is to be problem solvers.”

This story was originally published June 25, 2016 at 3:16 PM with the headline "Approved school funding plan may be ‘equitable,’ but what about ‘adequate’?."