Kansas Supreme Court: State legislature still isn’t getting its act together on K-12 education funding

In 2014, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state’s K-12 education finance formula didn’t distribute taxpayer money from one district to the next in a way that was fair.

It’s 2016 and the state’s highest court is saying the same thing.

In an eagerly awaited decision Thursday morning in what’s frequently referred to as the Gannon case, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state legislature spent the intervening years creating new school finance system that didn’t fix the problems it pointed out from 2014. The Kansas Legislature crafted a new funding formula that actually resulted in a loss of state aid for less wealthy districts while wealthier districts didn’t lose capital outlay and supplemental state aid. In other words, the legislature somehow accomplished the opposite of what the Kansas Supreme Court expected.

Once again, however, the Kansas Supreme Court is giving the Kansas Legislature another shot at getting it right, setting a June 30 deadline to come up with a finance system that funds the various Kansas school districts fairly and equitably.

Thursday’s ruling was silent on the matter of whether the state even funds K-12 education adequately to begin with. A decision on that matter could have far-ranging effects on the state budget. If justices order millions of dollars of additional money the state doesn’t have for K-12 education because they believe the legislature isn’t meeting its constitutional duty to adequately fund education, Kansas will find itself in a true economic crisis.

For now, lawmakers have to get to work on an equitable funding system. The Kansas Supreme Court says if they can’t get that done by June 30, then “no constitutionally valid school finance system will exist.”