For those who work in education, Thursday’s ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court on school finance did not come as a surprise. Educators know the learning opportunities between poor and rich school districts have become increasingly lopsided, and it’s the state Legislature’s responsibility to right the ship.
Thursday’s ruling said the disparities between school districts amount to $54 million. The justices didn’t say school funding necessarily had to increase by that much, only that that’s how much the system is off kilter. The justices then gave legislators until June 30 to find out how to bring parity to the state’s 286 school districts.
Ultra-conservatives took umbrage at the directive, saying the court is overstepping its authority.
They act this way because they know the enormity of the challenge that lies ahead.
To increase funding for those without, means either finding new money, or taking from those who have, which will only create a different set of schools being inadequately funded, so tightly managed is every district’s budget.
By its Constitution, Kansas must provide an adequate education to every student. And while the adequacy issue still has yet to be decided, the decision on equity cannot stand far apart. That is, you can’t say we’ll just lower school funding until we can afford it, because then it certainly will become inadequate. The means cannot be the deciding factor as to how the state’s schools are funded. A good education must remain the goal, and how to fund it, the challenge.
THE FORMER formula — before block grant funding was instigated in 2015 — to figure state aid worked quite well because it considered a district’s inherent property wealth, or lack thereof, the proportion of students with special needs, and a district’s demographics, including those who live in poverty and deemed at-risk.
Because wealth across Kansas is not uniformly distributed, the funding formula worked to help bring school districts on par as to what they could offer their students.
The best way to meet the court’s order would be to return to the per-pupil formula, and fund it.
For me, I’m thankful we have a judicial system that stands guard for our schools. I’d hate to think of the alternative.
