GOP leaders look to pass schools plan in Kansas Legislature

Kansas lawmakers returned to Topeka Friday for the second day of the special session to tackle school funding.

“This is something I agree with”, Brownback said.

Kansas lawmakers have approved a school funding plan that they say will end the risk of a legal fight closing Kansas schools. Democratic Sen. David Haley said the plan was being pushed by lawmakers who simply disagree with court rulings on school funding. The immediate issue was complying with the Supreme Court’s mandate to make the distribution of state aid fairer to poor school districts.

The final version of the bill emerged after an intense day of negotiations after the original version of the bill appeared destined for failure.

An original proposal cut general school aid and used that money to reduce property tax disparities.

A legal battle over school funding has been raging for years in Kansas.

Controversy arose early on over the source of that $38 million. A group of lawmakers, including Republican Rep. Melissa Rooker, pushed Republican leaders to eliminate the cut to schools.

In addition, the formula change creates a number of winners and losers.

The total spending at issue was less than 1 percent of the more than $4 billion a year Kansas already spends on its schools. Losing that case could cost the state more than $400 million.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt says he’s optimistic the legislation passed Friday night will end the lawsuits against the state over school funding. The state’s funding system can’t allow wealthy districts to get too far ahead of poorer ones, the court has said.

“This is much better”.

Rep. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican, said he’d support the Republican bill that makes it to the House floor.

“I would ask this body whether we should allow such a draconian measure to occur without giving the people a voice in November”, he said.

The bill only affects school funding for the upcoming year.

Amid the litigation, Republican legislators previous year junked the state’s 1990s-era per-pupil funding formula in favor of predictable grants to districts that allowed lawmakers to better control state spending. “The use of TANF funds, the use of (motor vehicle) funds, those are not sustainable”.

“I don’t think any of the solutions are pleasant”, Claeys sad. “We should be able to put that chapter behind us”.

The proposed constitutional amendment was one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed.

That amendment would have prohibited both the Kansas Supreme Court from closing public schools as a remedy in any school finance case. He also said the legislature is “assaulting” the judicial branch while doing nothing about the executive branch, which many Kansans in Haley’s district are much more upset with than the Supreme Court.

In 2005, lawmakers passed a statute aimed at accomplishing the same thing.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that the education funding system remains unfair to poor schools, despite three rounds of changes over the past three years.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D- Topeka, tells the Senate on Friday June 24, 2016, in Topeka, Kan., that pursuing a constitutional amendment is just a distraction from the real reason the legislature is in a special session, to fix school finance.