Mike O’Neal and Dave Trabert: School-funding opinion ignored rulings, facts

The June ruling from Shawnee County District Court finding school funding to be constitutionally inadequate came as no surprise; this wasn’t the first time the three-judge panel ignored state Supreme Court rulings and other facts.

The Supreme Court returned the panel’s January 2013 original ruling in March 2014, saying the judges used the wrong test to determine whether schools were adequately funded, and also issued several important new findings, including:

▪  Adequacy “is met when the public education financing system provided by the Legislature for grades K-12 – through structure and implementation – is reasonably calculated to have all Kansas public education students meet or exceed the standards set out in Rose (standards).”

▪  Base state aid is not what determines adequacy, declaring “funds from all available resources, including grants and federal assistance, should be considered.” Further, “state monies invested in the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS) may also be a valid consideration because a stable retirement system is a factor in attracting and retaining quality educators – a key to providing an adequate education.”

▪  “Actual costs from studies are more akin to estimates than the certainties the panel suggested.”

The district court issued a December 2014 opinion in response to the Supreme Court but it didn’t examine whether students are meeting or exceeding the Rose standards. It also said base state aid should be increased based on a 2001 cost study used in previous lawsuits, even though the Supreme Court found that cost studies are estimates, not certainties, and all funding sources should be considered. The June 2015 opinion also claimed, contrary to the Supreme Court, that KPERS contributions have “never been considered by experts or other competent professionals” in determining adequacy, or, if so, merely as an add-on increase.

The June 2015 opinion contains multiple references to districts’ funding “needs” but fails to provide any valid substantiation. The panel cited school districts’ budgets as a basis of “need” despite the well-known fact that districts deliberately budget more than they plan to spend.

No one knows what schools need to achieve the necessary outcomes while making efficient use of taxpayer money, because no such analysis has ever been undertaken in Kansas. School districts may want more, but many openly acknowledge that they choose to operate inefficiently. Further, more than $400 million of prior years’ aid was used to increase operating cash reserves by 88 percent since 2005.

The panel also used tortured, circular logic in finding capital outlay and supplemental general state aid to be inequitable. It acknowledged that the Supreme Court said equity can be met by revising those formulas so as to spend less money, but still determined funding to be inequitable due to phantom “needs” of school districts.

This is by no means a complete discussion of the panel’s general disregard for Supreme Court directives and other pertinent facts, but hopefully sufficient to make the point. Total funding, including local and federal dollars, has been increased by nearly $2 billion over the past 10 years, yet thousands of students have been left behind and achievement gaps are getting worse.

Money does matter, but it’s how the money is spent that makes the difference – not how much.

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Mike O’Neal and Dave Trabert: School-funding opinion ignored rulings, facts."