Local administrators speak about Kan. Supreme Court ruling

Schools will be able to operate and plan budgets for the 2018-19 school year after a Monday ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that the state’s school finance system fails to adequately fund K-12 public schools.

The court allowed the Kansas Legislature another year to fix the current finance law and add more funding, thus allowing next school year to start as planned.

“It (the ruling) went about the way I thought it would,” Ted Hessong, incoming USD 234 Superintendent, said. “They said the level of adequacy is not there financially for the goals of the state board … in order to achieve them, you have to have the funding and resources to make that happen.”

Hessong was hired by the USD 234 Board of Education in April as the district’s new superintendent. He will replace outgoing Superintendent Bob Beckham, whose retirement is effective July 1. Hessong’s contract runs through the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years.

In its ruling, the court held the state has not shown that school finance laws enacted during the 2017 and 2018 legislative sessions meet the adequacy requirements in Article 6 of the Kansas Constitution. But, if the state “chooses to make timely financial adjustments in response to problems identified with its selected plan and the accompanying calculations and then by completing that plan, the state can bring the K-12 public school finance system into constitutional compliance with the adequacy requirement.”

It will require legislators to add some additional money for inflation and follow through with the funding.

“It allows schools to go ahead and build the budget, and any changes would be added into the budget,” Hessong said. “So they’re not closing schools, which will operate based on the formula they have.”

“It’s never a good situation for schools to not be able to open,” USD 234 Business Manager Gina Shelton said. “It would be a huge economic impact that’s not good for any of us. Even if I didn’t work for the school district.”

The court also held that new laws resolve equity violations identified in the Gannon school finance case by the court in late 2017. The court withheld any remedial action until June 30, 2019 to allow lawmakers an opportunity to make the required adjustments. Briefs are due April 15 and oral arguments are scheduled for May 9 to review whatever remedial legislation may be enacted, according to a Kansas Association of School Board summary of the court ruling.

“I guess I wasn’t surprised (by the ruling),” Bret Howard, superintendent of USD 235 in Uniontown, said. “If you review some of the cost analysis studies the Legislature has paid to have done, they’re very much in line with what the court ruled.”

The court has previously said school funding is divided into two areas - equity and adequacy - and funding for both must meet tests in order to pass constitutional muster.

“They (the court) have said for the first time that equity is OK, that half of it has been settled,” Howard said. “Now the adequacy piece is what is still out there. I think the court said ‘You did a nice job, now fix the adequacy portion.’ I’m grateful the court still retained jurisdiction, because then they would have to restart the whole process over again.”

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