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KANSAS HIGH COURT TO STATE: SCHOOL FUNDING FORMULA ADEQUATE, NOW FUND IT
By Wendy Lecker
The Kansas Supreme Court has found the State’s most recent school funding formula to be adequate but will retain jurisdiction to make certain the State fully phases in required funding increases through 2023. The Court’s ruling, issued June 14, is the latest decision in Gannon v. State, Kansas’ long-running lawsuit challenging inadequate public education funding.
The Gannon case was filed in 2010, after the State walked away from implementing a funding remedy ordered by the Supreme Court in an earlier case, Montoy v. State. In a 2005 decision in Montoy, the Court threw out the State’s school finance system and ordered reforms to ensure Kansas school children adequate resources to give them a meaningful opportunity to achieve academic standards. The Montoy case ended in 2006, when the Court ruled that new legislation substantially met constitutional requirements.
In 2008, however, before the State fully implemented the Montoy remedy, it began making significant reductions in school funding. The Gannon lawsuit was filed in response.
The Gannon plaintiffs – parents, students and school districts – are represented by attorneys and Kansans Alan Rupe and John Robb. Alan and John, who also handled the Montoy v. State lawsuit, are among the nation’s most experienced plaintiffs’ lawyers in school funding cases.
In its initial Gannon decisions, the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s rulings that the State’s action’s resulted in inadequate and inequitable funding levels and ordered funding reforms.
The plaintiffs were forced to seek relief from the Supreme Court several times after the Legislature and Governor failed to enact the required reforms. In 2018, the Court ruled that additional funds provided by the State addressed funding equity but did not ensure adequate funding levels.
In its June 14 decision, the Court found the State had finally substantially complied with the constitutional requirement for funding adequacy. The Court noted the plaintiffs’ agreement that a $90 million increase was adequate for 2019-20. The Court also found the State provided good faith estimates for inflation to be phased-in through successive year increases through 2023.
Most important, the Court is retaining jurisdiction over the Gannon lawsuit to ensure the State follows through with the required funding increases. In a ruling similar to the 2009 New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision in Abbott v. Burke, the Kansas Supreme Court pointed to Kansas’ long-term resistance to providing adequate funding and noted its inherent power and responsibility to enforce judicial remedies, especially those relating to constitutional rights.
The Gannon litigation represents a powerful example of the critical role courts can play in advocacy efforts to ensure states fairly fund public education. The Gannon rulings have safeguarded the constitutional right to education against repeated efforts by the legislative and executive branches to severely reduce Kansas’ investment in the education of the state’s children.
No doubt, the Gannon plaintiffs and their experienced counsel will continue their vigilance to make certain lawmakers follow through on the latest court mandate to effectuate the education rights of children across the state.
Wendy Lecker is a Senior Attorney at Education Law Center
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
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Good to hear. As we found out from the midterm elections, there’s lots that’s not the matter with Kansas these days.
even a couple die-hard Republican relatives I know in KS are truly surprising everyone by suddenly voicing loudly anti-Republican statements
This is what is happening.
The United States cannot afford to pay for all of its wars around the world and provide adequate funding for its schools and rebuilding its aging infrastructure.
And when it comes to billionaires (with loads of money to hand out to elected representatives so they can hide some of it and spend some of it to win their next election) who are war profiteers making more money from bullets and bombs killing people all over the world, even our own troops vs adequately funding public schools and/or any public services, the schools will always get the short end of the foot long thread of funding.
The schools will get an inch. The crooks will get the other eleven inches.
YEP!
Republicans never learn. Voters put this idiot in power but learned that tax cuts don’t work to ‘bring prosperity to the state”. Why doesn’t the rest of the country learn from this wasted experiment? The Trump administration nominated Brownbeck as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom? Trump only picks the best for every spot. What, exactly, does this job entail? Be a total flop in Kansas and then move on.
……………………………….
Revisiting Sam Brownback’s tax cut disaster: How does Kansas feel about his “experiment”?
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback was evangelical about his radical plan to slash taxes. A new documentary looks at results
APRIL 17, 2018 3:54PM (UTC)
“It’s like shooting adrenaline into the heart of growing the economy.” That’s how Sam Brownback, then governor of Kansas, described his radical tax cut plan in 2012. He was evangelical about it. Slashing corporate and personal income tax rates and completely eliminating taxes on limited liability companies, he promised, would create tens of thousands of jobs and bring prosperity to the state.
It did not work out that way.
At first, there were many believers, including the Kansas State Legislature, which passed the governor’s revolutionary tax package in 2012. Some 330,000 independent business owners took advantage of their new tax exemption. Corporations and individuals enjoyed their income tax cuts and refunds. The result was a $700 million loss in revenue for the state the first year the tax plan went into effect.
For the next five years, as revenue continued to tank, the state found itself mired in fiscal crisis, and job growth was anemic compared to the national recovery. Last year, a bi-partisan majority in the legislature essentially repealed the entire Brownback tax package.
Brownback had won a landslide victory in the 2010 gubernatorial race and was re-elected in 2014, though by a thin margin. Early this year, the Trump administration nominated him as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and pushed his confirmation through the Senate. But by the time Brownback resigned as governor at the end of January 2018, his “Kansas experiment” had been shelved…
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2018/04/17/revisiting-sam-brownbacks-tax-cut-disaster-how-does-kansas-feel-about-his-experiment/
Teachers in Orlando, FL (Orange County Public Schools) speaking LIVE against a minuscule pay increase at a school board meeting. Hopefully the video will be archived.
While I’m thrilled about the decision in the Kansas finance case, I would be very surprised by a similar ruling here in FL. Remember that the Court ruled that even though VAM scores were bad, they were at least a start in revamping teacher pay. This new, even conservativer Court wouldn’t budge over finance—what, with vouchers to religious schools to pay for and all…