In this week’s Gannon v. Kansas decision, the Shawnee County District Court panel applied the Rose standards articulated in the Supreme Court opinion to determine whether Kansas’s K-12 public education system is adequately funded. The court held that funding at current levels is constitutionally inadequate, stating: “it is fair and reasonable to believe, as highly true, from all the evidence advanced in this case emanating from these knowledgeable people, that these educational goals, these Rose standards, are not met, and will not be met, by the current level of state supported educational funding.” Gannon, p. 92.

The decision throughout reinforces what parents, teachers, and education advocates have asserted for the last few years of state underfunding, namely that there is an education funding crisis in our state. The panel stated that “every school district official, every teacher, and every school employee that dealt with students and every official from any association that dealt with K-12 schools and their funding needs opined that school district needs in terms of funding were presently, and clearly, inadequate to the tasks of providing a constitutionally adequate education to Kansas’s K-12 students.” p. 91. The panel specifically referred to the underfunding as a “trauma” (p. 104) and said “the impact of the loss of funding was endemic, systemic, and statewide”. p. 41. The panel also noted that the impact of inflation means that stagnant funding results in a decrease in purchasing power for school districts.

Parents and teachers who have spent the last few years debating the needs of their children and students with lobbyists pushing an anti-tax agenda might find comfort in the affirmations from the Court as it found that the “true experts, and the true expertise in the area of education, as presented to us, were from those trained or tasked with actually providing, or overseeing, the state’s educational pursuits.” p. 86. Teachers, who have been struggling under the burden of a lack of funding with expanding class sizes, will be relieved to know that the court recognized that “educational success, particularly, for those students often dealing with circumstances or personal issues beyond their control, and which, by expert consensus, are generally more difficult to educate or amenable to educational breakthroughs, find benefit only in more personal attention from their instructors, associated instructional personnel, and from other supporting services. . . This, of course, means smaller class sizes and more teachers and adjunctive educational personnel to assist both students and teachers.” p. 38.

The panel repeatedly referred to the cannibalization of Base State Aid Per Pupil (BSAPP) dollars, as other funding streams were diminished or eliminated. It explained that additional funding, such as KPERS, does not diminish the need for BSAPP. However, the Court saved its harshest critique for the State’s reliance on the Local Option Budget (LOB) to meet the State’s constitutional obligation to fund education. (In 2014 as part of HB 2506, the legislature claimed that LOB funds count towards fulfilling its constitutional obligation to fund schools.) The panel explained, “the LOB portion of the Kansas school finance formula is not so sufficiently designed today, nor was it structurally originally intended, to stand as a failsafe funding mechanism that would assure each and every Kansas K-12 student the education our Kansas constitution commands and is designed to assure.” p. 75. The opinion explicitly stated that delegating the State’s constitutional duty to the LOB “is both unlawful under Art 6 Section 6(b) and substantially threatens the common good of all Kansas children wherever they may reside in Kansas.” p. 110.

It articulated “K-12 school funding in Kansas is still proceeding by political choice . . . to the harm of the Kansas K-12 school system and in the face of the constitutional imperative of Art. 6 section 6(b)” (pp. 95-96) and noted there are many “ways to undermine the K-12 school system, including to simply misspeak the essential expenditure needs that actually further student achievement”, (p. 97) citing as an example the legislature’s elimination of the non-proficient weighting for students ineligible for free lunch “which caused a statewide decrease in funds that would otherwise have been employed to combat student non-proficieincy, which status epitomizes a failure of educational purpose at a level far below that envisoned by the Rose factors”. p. 97 It concluded, “we understand the self-imposed fiscal dilemma now facing the State of Kansas…since the obligations here declared emanate from our Kansas Constitution, avoidance is not an option.” p. 115.

The panel emphasized that a “brightline” of funding ought to be established, so as to provide a basis for determining needs and whether constitutional obligations have been met. Various examples were provided on how to go about setting this brightline, including pointing out that the “BSAPP in 2012 dollars of $4492, as we sought to enforce in our January 2013 Opinion, would now be worth $4654 in 2014 dollars.” p. 101. We note that current BSAPP is currently $3852, and this has been “cannibalized” by the loss and reduction of other funding streams. Ultimately, the opinion stated that “whether, and how, that overall obligation is to be shared or imposed is a matter for the legislature after consulting with their constituents.” p. 113.

Game On for Kansas Schools accepts this invitation for consultation. We promise to continue to provide our legislators with the truth about the “trauma of underfunding,” and what that means for all Kansas children and for the future of our State. Further, we encourage our fellow parents, teachers and other concerned community members to engage in this consultation, and to provide their own Representatives and Senators with information about the realities for their students, their teachers, and their schools. We must protect public education in the State of Kansas. We thank those legislators who continue to fight on behalf of our children and hope to add more of them in the 2015 legislative session.