Kansas Supreme Court unanimously rules state school finance formula inadequate

The ruling Thursday morning from the Kansas Supreme Court unanimously voting that state funding to schools is inadequate came as no surprise to Hays-USD 489 Superintendent John Thissen.

Kansas is already facing a $1-billion deficit over the next two years, so where will the money come from?

Lane said the court’s decision signaled a potential end to a “minimalist education experience” for Kansas schoolchildren.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Supreme Court ruling also struck down a 2015 law that favored “block grants” to districts over per-student funding.

Lane said that since 2010 – when Kansas City, Kan., and three other school districts sued the state over funding – her staff has been consumed with finding ways to provide for students with state funds that haven’t kept up with increasing costs.

S&P Global Ratings cited the state’s structural budget pressures and reliance on one-time revenue measures when it revised the outlook on the state’s AA-minus credit rating to negative from stable last month. A coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the House recently overpowered conservatives on key votes to expand Medicaid and override Brownback’s tax bill veto. He favors raising cigarette and liquor taxes and business filing fees, along with internal government borrowing and other accounting moves.

Following a 2016 Supreme Court decision on education funding, Kansas’ schools almost faced a court-ordered shutdown over budgeting issues, forcing Governor Brownback to call a legislative special session in order to keep schools open.

“Most importantly, the Court acknowledged the high quality of Kansas schools”, Ryckman stated in a release. United States dollars 386 Madison-Virgil Superintendent Ryan Bradbury says full funding would be great for his district. In the wake of the decision, legislative leaders called on lawmakers to redouble their efforts at developing a new formula. “We need to make sure we have adequate funding for bilingual students because we have to take a child that may not know any English and get them to read on grade level by third grade”.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday said the current block grant setup is not sufficiently funding public schools.

“N$3 ot only is the State failing to provide approximately one-fourth of all its public school K-12 students with the basic skills of both reading and math, but that it is also leaving behind significant groups of harder-to-educate students”, the decision states.

In Wichita, community activist Djuan Wash, the father of a 9-year-old girl, said such problems create “a cycle of poverty”.

Rupe said the state’s fiscal woes should not interfere with the requirement to fund education properly. The state now spends about $8,900 per student on aid to public schools.

Kansas is one of more than a dozen states that have faced lawsuits from parents and school districts over funding levels, as reporter Sam Zeff of member station KCUR has noted.

During oral arguments last September before the Supreme Court, attorneys for the districts said lawmakers were violating the state constitution by providing only enough aid to districts so a portion of students do well.

Many legislators weren’t ready to be pinned down.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley issued a statement after the ruling.