TOPEKA — The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that kansas school funding is unconstitutional, and had refused to change an earlier order closing all public schools after June 30. The 47-page ruling was issued Friday afternoon … that legislative efforts to deal with funding among poorer school districts and wealthy schools created… “intolerable, and simply unfair, wealth-based disparities…. these changes worsened rather than cured K-12 funding inequities.” Reactions from Republican legislators and other GOP leaders was swift and harsh. “It is unfortunate that the Kansas Supreme Court has put at risk the education of Kansas students by threatening to close schools on June 30,” said Gov. Sam Brownback. “The court is engaging in political brinksmanship with this ruling, and the cost will be borne by our children.” Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the Kansas Supreme Court has concluded the Legislature has cured the constitutional infirmities in the capital outlay funding system. “But the Court once again rejected the Legislature’s good faith efforts to cure what the Court identified as constitutional inequities in equalization aid for local option budgets,” Schmidt said. “… I am distressed that the strain and uncertainty caused by this dispute persist even though more than 99 percent of the school-funding system for next year has been approved and accepted by both the Court and the Legislature.” For its part, the high court’s decision noted it has regularly asked legislators over to fix the system of financing public education and legislators haven’t so. “The legislature has had more than enough opportunities to resolve this unconstitutionality on its own terms,” Senior Judge Michael Malone, who isn’t a supreme court judge but sat on the panel after a couple of judges withdrew, noted in a separate sharply-worded opinion. It is not a case of t he court telling legislators what to do, it is a case of legislators who won’t do there, he wrote. Lawmakers, returning to the Statehouse Wednesday for what was scheduled to be a formal adjournment, will have about a month to meet the demands of the court.
Monday, May 30, 2 p.m.
