It’s been a long time coming, but even though the Kansas Supreme Court has released its decision in the state’s appeal of the Gannon vs. Kansas school finance lawsuit, the question of funding schools is still up in the air.
USD 428 is one of the school districts involved in the lawsuit asking the Supreme Court whether or not the Kansas Legislature could legally reduce school funding as it has during the past six years.
In its decision on Friday, the Supreme Court reaffirmed it holds the constitutional authority to decide whatever school finance plan the Legislature enacts meets constitutional requirements to provide adequate and suitable education to the state’s K-12 pupils.
The Legislature had promoted the idea that whatever decision they made, trumped whatever the Court could decide. With the Court’s decision, that clearly is not the case.
The decision marked two other areas of concern, equity and adequacy of funding, Khris Thexton, USD 428 Director of Business and Operations noted.
“The court ruled Legislature is not fulfilling state law regarding funding,” Thexton said.
However, the court also said that the Legislature has the power to either fund according to state law or change state law governing educational funding.
The court told the three-judge panel that by July 1 the Legislature must either fully fund the current statute on capital outlay and LOB equalization funds or make changes in law to meet the current amount of funding. The panel would then have to determine whether those changes are sufficient to produce adequate and suitable education for Kansas pupils.
In its decision, the high court declared that certain school finance laws fail to provide equity as required by the Kansas Constitution. This portion of the case was returned to the Shawnee County District Court to reconsider whether school finance laws provide adequacy.
The unanimous decision said that total spending “is not the touchstone for adequacy” of public school finance.
 “The court said that adequacy of public education is not judged by funding, but by how students must meet educational standards,” Thexton said.
The Supreme Court additionally ruled that funding of the supplemental general state aid program is unconstitutional.
The high court said that the state has created unconstitutional, wealth-based disparities among districts by eliminating all capital outlay state aid payments. Those were designed to equalize the ability of districts to provide suitable funding for schools. By not fully funding local option budget provisions of state law they failed to equalize the effect of those local option budgets in individual districts.
The Supreme Court in its ruling adopted a new standard for determining adequacy of education. The standards basically provide a framework for the state in judging whether education is adequate. The Court informed the three-judge panel meeting those standards of proficiency will be the test used in determining the adequacy of public education in the state.
“Ultimately at this time we are unclear how this decision will affect USD 428,” Thexton said.