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May 11 Supreme Court hearing on school finance bill

Plaintiffs, defendants and interested parties are filing final written arguments in preparation for the May 11 Supreme Court hearing on HB 2247, the State Legislatures remedy to the High Court order to fund Kansas public schools.

The Supreme Court has granted KNEA the right to file a Supplement to the original Amicus (friend of the Court) brief. KNEA will address the disequalizing impact of the current proposal and the impact that that has on salaries and educational opportunities.

The High Court rejected a request by GOP legislators to answer questions about the $142 million school finance package, limiting the May 11 hearing to attorneys for the state, the State Board of Education and school districts. The two-page order said that neither the House nor Senate was a named party in the case, but added that legislators could file a brief with the court.

In addition, the court appeared to deny a request by attorneys hired by Attorney General Phill Kline to limit the scope of arguments by state board attorney Dan Biles. Attorneys from the Kansas City area law firm of Lathrop and Gage asked the court to keep Biles from making arguments critical of the Legislature's plan.

The High Court ordered plaintiffs and defendants to address ten components of the formula as passed in HB 2247:

• Base State Aid Per Pupil (BSAPP)
• At-risk students,
• English as a second language students,
• Special education students,
• Local Option budgets, (increased but unequalized in HB 2247)
• Cost of living weighting (the sweet 17)
• Low enrollment weighting,
• Correlation weighting,
• Extraordinary declining enrollment weighting (added for Shawnee Mission and a handful of others), and
• Capital outlay.

The Justices said: "Of special concern to the court is whether the actual cost of providing a suitable education was considered as to each of these components and the financing formula as a whole, and whether House Bill 2247 exacerbates and/or creates funding disparities among the districts."

KNEA and the other education advocate organizations have maintained that the funding levels where chosen not on the actual cost but rather on how much money the legislature could come up with without raising taxes and that the local option budget, cost of living weighting, and extraordinary declining enrollment provisions of the bill will be available only to wealthy school districts and so exacerbate funding disparities.

The Court also ordered the parties to address the "constitutional significance" of:

• The failure to appropriate money for the Skills for Success program;
• The failure to appropriate money for the Consumer Price Index - Urban increase in state aid;
• The failure to appropriate money for annual increases in state aid for excess special education costs, while requiring special education aid to be reduced and prorated when funding is insufficient; and
• The failure to identify a source of funding for the school financing formula beyond the 2005-2006 school year.

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