Kansas Supreme Court rules Shawnee Mission out of school finance case

The Shawnee Mission school district won’t be allowed to intervene in the appeal of a court case that could set the course of public-school finance for years to come.

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Shawnee Mission, a district in a wealthy Johnson County community, waited too long to try to intervene in the lawsuit brought by poorer districts that include Wichita.

The decision is the latest twist in the long-running Gannon school-finance case.

Wichita, Hutchinson, Kansas City and Dodge City districts have sued the state alleging that current school funding is both inadequate and inequitable. The Kansas Constitution requires the state to provide “suitable” school funding.

A three-judge school-finance court ruled in late June that the current funding system of block grants to districts is unconstitutional “both in regard to its adequacy of funding and in its change of, and in its embedding of, inequities in the provision of capital outlay state aid and supplemental general state aid.” The state has appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

Gov. Sam Brownback and the state Legislature passed the block-grant plan to fund schools for two years while they rewrite the funding formula for schools. But the school-finance judges characterized that as little more than a freeze on school spending.

The Supreme Court justices acknowledged that Shawnee Mission has a substantial interest in the outcome of the case, and that the district’s interests aren’t adequately represented by either the state or the districts that have sued the state.

Shawnee Mission is in an upscale community and wants to eliminate limits on how much local property tax can be spent to fund local schools.

“Generally, the plaintiffs (including Wichita) request that more state financial aid be distributed to their districts and other similarly situated districts,” said the court opinion by Chief Justice Lawton Nuss. “But U.S.D. 512 (Shawnee Mission) contends the distribution of these funds actually exacerbates inequities between districts like itself and those like the plaintiffs.”

But the justices ruled that Shawneee Mission should have known its interests were at risk by 2012 and certainly no later than 2014: “So we conclude its motion to intervene 1 year later was untimely.”

Alan Rupe, a lawyer representing the plaintiff districts, acknowledged that Shawnee Mission’s interests on property tax spending are different and not interests the plaintiff districts wish to represent.

“It is our opinion that SMSD wants to turn public education in Kansas into an ‘every district for itself’ system – and we are certainly opposed to any efforts to significantly disrupt the equity of the school funding system,” Rupe said in a statement.

Monday’s decision invited Shawnee Mission to communicate its interests by filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Kansas Supreme Court rules Shawnee Mission out of school finance case."