Demonstrators call on Kansas lawmakers to fix school funding

More than 100 people gathered on the lawn of Wichita North High School on Tuesday to urge state lawmakers to fix inequities in school funding and avoid a statewide school shutdown.

Less than an hour after Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback called a special legislative session, Wichita-area teachers, school board members, elected officials and others called on him to set a date.

“Our Legislature has got to get this fixed,” said Peggy Warren, an eighth-grade teacher at Hadley Middle School in Wichita.

“They’ve had many months to do so, and now we’re down to the wire,” she said. “Hopefully, they will get their act together and get this done in the next couple weeks.”

Kansas lawmakers left Topeka last week without addressing the court’s order to fix inequities in school funding by June 30 or risk closure of the state’s schools.

Steve Wentz, president of United Teachers of Wichita, thanked supporters, many of them children, who held signs with slogans such as “Leave experiments to the science teachers” and “I’d like to see my friends in August.”

“If a bridge or a road isn’t fixed when it needs to be, we’re severely inconvenienced. We might have to go somewhere else to get to our destination, and we might be able to do that for five or six years,” Wentz said.

“You don’t fund education and a child doesn’t learn to read by third grade, there’s no turning that clock back,” he said. “We all pay for that in the long run.”

Betty Arnold, president of the Wichita school board, said the community would suffer if schools close on July 1, even if a shutdown is brief. Thousands of school employees could lose paychecks, families could lose child care, and hungry children could lose free meals they get through a district-run summer food program, Arnold said.

“I urge our legislators to be aware: We’re not talking about just your battle of ‘Close the schools, we don’t care, it has no impact,’ ” she said. “It does have an impact on our economy, and that’s what we need them to understand. Stop the foolishness.”

Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, challenged his legislative colleagues to travel back to the Statehouse and craft a solution that will pass court muster and avoid a shutdown.

“I want to challenge the governor and his rubber stampers in the Legislature to … look at these children right here and tell them their schools aren’t going to open on July 1 because they want to have a fight with the Supreme Court,” Ward said.

“Come here and look at these children and tell them their schools aren’t important enough. … That’s wrong, and we can do better.”

This story was originally published June 7, 2016 at 10:46 AM with the headline "Demonstrators call on Kansas lawmakers to fix school funding."