(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers May 30, 2016)
A relatively or somewhat, or maybe just not, clever plan by the Kansas Legislature this spring to meet the increasing funding needs of Kansas public schools by shuffling money within the school finance budget law was declared, well, not clever and not constitutional by the Kansas Supreme Court last week.
The decision that the Legislature had failed to provide equitable levels of state support for two provisions of school finance—the Local Option Budget and assistance with district capital outlay funds—came as lawmakers were quietly congratulating themselves on meeting those inequities by shuffling money between funds in the budget.
The court said that the ploy didn’t work, isn’t constitutional in providing equitable support for education of schoolchildren in Kansas and told the Legislature that it has to fix that problem or the roughly $4 billion that the state spends on public education can’t be spent in the fiscal year that starts July 1.