Kansas Supreme Court to issue major school-finance ruling Thursday morning

The Kansas Supreme Court is expected to release a major ruling Thursday morning on the constitutionality of Gov. Sam Brownback’s “block grant” funding for schools.

Court officials could not be reached for comment, but they sent a notice just before the end of the business day Wednesday saying the court will issue its decision in the Gannon school finance case at about 9:30 a.m.

At the heart of the decision is whether the Legislature complied with previous school-finance decisions by the Supreme Court when last year it changed the way schools are funded, said Alan Rupe, a lawyer representing districts that have sued for more money.

“We’ll know at 9:30 in the morning,” he said.

The ruling, expected to deal with the fairness of the current school funding system, will be released shortly before the Kansas House votes on its budget bill and the Kansas Senate holds a budget debate.

Sen. Julia Lynn, R-Overland Park, saw the timing of the court’s decision as overtly political, because rulings are normally released on Fridays rather than Thursdays.

“I think it’s obviously a strategic move on their part to send a message to the Legislature,” Lynn said. “They’re taking a shot across the bow. They’re taking a shot across 10th Street.”

The Supreme Court building in Topeka is across 10th Street from the Capitol.

In the case, four school districts – Wichita, Hutchinson, Kansas City and Dodge City – have challenged the current school finance plan, saying it does not meet the state’s constitutional burden to provide suitable funding for public education.

The case has been split into two questions: Is the overall funding adequate, and is school funding being equitably distributed to districts?

Thursday’s decision will probably deal only with the equity portion of the case, which is further along. Oral arguments in the adequacy portion of the case are not scheduled until spring.

The school districts have challenged the block grant system proposed by Brownback and passed into law by the Legislature last year through Senate Bill 7.

Before SB 7, schools were funded through a complicated formula that included a base state aid amount per pupil plus “weightings” – extra money schools received for educating difficult-to-teach students such as limited-English, poor and at-risk populations.

SB 7 repealed that formula and replaced it with a system of block grants based on each district’s current funding. The idea was basically to hold schools at about their current level of funding for two years while the Legislature crafts a new finance plan.

Lawyers for the state have argued that the Legislature, not the courts, should decide what constitutes suitable funding for education and have said that the state is giving the schools more money than they got before.

But in June, a three-judge school-finance court ruled that SB 7 failed to meet constitutional muster, setting the stage for the state to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The three-judge panel ruled that SB 7, “though promoted as a change and an improvement in K-12 funding, really encompasses … what is no more than a freeze on USD (unified school district) operational funding for two years.”

It went on to say that any purported increase comes “by way of adding in, under the guise of operational funds, Kansas Public Employees Retirement System employer contributions … to the ‘block’ of funds provided.”

The court specifically ordered remedies to two areas of school finance: capital outlay, which pays for construction and improvement of schools, and local option budgets, which is local property tax money that goes to schools.

The cost of those ordered remedies is estimated to be about $54 million.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Kansas Supreme Court to issue major school-finance ruling Thursday morning."