Kansas Public Schools And The Supreme Court

Here we go again. The Supreme Court of Kansas has ruled, once again, that the Republican dominated Kansas legislature has failed the public schools in Kansas by refusing to properly fund them.

The Supreme Court ruled in February of this year that the state is not adequately funding the schools, and the legislature pretended to fix the problem. The court has now ruled that an acceptable budget for schools must be passed and in place by June 30, or schools must remain closed. The schools must remain closed? That seems like a tall order in a country where all children under the age of sixteen years are legally obligated to attend school, except in rare cases wherein children have graduated early. It seems much more likely that Kansas public schools could go into receivership.

The crux of the issue here is the distribution of funds between richer and poorer school districts. Kansas, in an ongoing effort to resist Brown vs. the Board of Education, continues to craft its geographic school districts in a deliberately unequal manner. The Kansas legislature could easily remedy this by consolidating schools, county by county, eliminating the need for multiple school boards and multiple administrations within a county. All of the counties and their school boards would answer to a central authority, the state. This would save money, and make equitable distribution much more possible. If the Kansas legislature would just accept this, and stop resisting the Constitution, the Supreme Court would not have any reasons to stop public schools in Kansas from opening in August for the school year of 2016-2017.