Wichita district officials call on legislators to keep schools open

Within hours of the Supreme Court decision that schools are unfairly funded under the current block-grant financing system, Wichita school officials were calling on the Legislature to fix the problem and keep schools open.

“It’s no longer about my way, your way,” said school board President Betty Arnold. “It’s about the Kansas way. … So I would love to see them wake up, do what’s right by our students, and let’s move forward as a state.”

In its ruling Thursday, the court gave lawmakers a June 30 deadline to prove they have fixed inequities in the division of funds between school districts. If they don’t, the court indicated it would order a shutdown because unconstitutional funding can’t be allowed to continue into the next fiscal year.

Wichita Superintendent John Allison said the deadline means the court intends for lawmakers to craft a new school-finance formula in the current legislative session, or at least fix the equity piece of the current system in short order.

“We trust that Kansas children will be the focus of their (legislative) deliberations,” he said.

The Wichita school district is a plaintiff in the court case.

Amid so much financial uncertainty, planning for the next school year’s budget is “incredibly difficult,” Allison said.

“We can only plan for what we know, and right now we know the law is the block grants, so that’s what we have to plan for,” he said. “What happens between now and June 30th could alter that significantly, but we’ve got to continue to move forward on what we know.

“Year after year, education funding is left in the air, and you get to the end of a legislative session and we’re still kind of waiting to know: What’s it going to be? How’s it going to impact us? It’s a difficult way to run a business. But it’s just the reality of what we’ve had to face over the last seven years.”

School board member Lynn Rogers said that because Kansas schools are deeply intertwined with the state economy, a potential school shutdown should frighten lawmakers and residents.

“If we put up a ‘closed’ sign on June 30 (on schools), we’ll put up a ‘closed’ sign for the state of Kansas,” Rogers said.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 10:05 PM with the headline "Wichita district officials call on legislators to keep schools open."