“We have watched as Governor Brownback and his allies in the legislature complained bitterly about rulings to adequately fund education for nearly 500,000 children in Kansas public schools,” said Judith Deedy, Executive Director of Game On. “As parents, we are grateful to have one branch of government that can’t be bought or bullied and we will vote yes to retain our justices.”

Read more here: http://bluevalleypost.com/2016/11/02/johnson-county-pro-education-groups-encourage-voters-retain-supreme-court-justices-46200

Here is our full statement:

I’m Judith Deedy, and I am a parent of a 9th grader and two 7th graders in the Shawnee Mission School District. I also serve as the volunteer Executive Director of Game On for Kansas Schools, a nonprofit, nonpartisan grassroots advocacy effort among Kansans who share a belief in high-quality public education as a right of all Kansas students. We advocate for Kansas public schools to ensure our teachers, principals, superintendents, and school board members have the resources necessary to deliver quality education to all our students. And that is why I am here today.

Over the past several years as I tuned in to the plight of Kansas public education, I watched with dismay as we had to deal with legislators who claimed to support public education while campaigning, but then in office listened less to their constituents than to the entities that funded their campaigns. As a Kansan who values public education, I hold especially dear the need for courts to act independently, without regard to the wishes of a sitting governor, or the desires of those with access to dark money. We need a court that works to uphold the constitution, and we need the people of Kansas to know that when they appear in court, it is a court of law, rather than a Brownback court, a court beholden to special interests or a court of public opinion.

The movement to oust our current Supreme Court justices and Court of Appeals judges threatens that. It is simply the latest in a series of attempts to eliminate our fair and impartial judiciary. As public education advocates, we have seen bills to restrict the courts from ruling on school funding cases, to change the manner in which judges and justices are selected, to make it easier to impeach justices and to otherwise punish the courts for ruling against the state in school funding cases.

We have watched as Governor Brownback and his allies in the legislature complained bitterly about being ordered to increase school funding levels and labeled the courts “activist” because of those orders. We do not view the judges and justices as activists. We respect their willingness to honor their duty to interpret the state constitution and to hold the legislature to its critical obligation to adequately provide for the education of the nearly 500,000 children in Kansas public schools. As parents, we are grateful to have one branch of government that can’t be bought or bullied, and we will vote to protect that.

We wish to remind Kansans that the courts do not and have not initiated the school funding litigation. Rather the courts have heard the cases brought to them by Kansas families and local school districts concerned that our state was failing to meet the needs of its children. We note that the role of voters in a retention election is to evaluate whether the judges and justices have been fair and impartial and committed to the rule of law, have upheld the constitution, have demonstrated their legal knowledge and experience, have been neutral, respectful and committed to all aspects of the administration of justice and have not committed malfeasance. Failure to change their interpretation of the constitution to match Governor Brownback’s ideology is not a legitimate basis for ousting judges and justices. No Supreme Court justice or Court of Appeals judge has lost a retention election in the past 60 years. Yet now we face a movement to oust 4 justices at one time. This is a power grab attempt by those who wish to be unfettered by the constitution and should be rejected by Kansans who care about public education, good government and a functioning democracy with three separate branches.

We are one week out from the election. We encourage Kansans to vote yes on retaining our justices and appeals court judges and maintain a fair and impartial judiciary that is nonpartisan and nonpolitical.