Eyes on Kansas School Finance Cases

A most unusual wave in the story of school finance litigation is washing upon Kansas at the moment.  In January, a trial court in Kansas ruled that the state’s current education budget – adopted following a very large income tax cut that diminished state revenue – did not meet the Kansas constitution’s mandate to provide “suitable provisions for finance of the educational interests of the state.”  Nothing terribly new there – for decades, state courts and state legislatures across the country have been engaged in ping pong matches over whether state school finance schemes comply with state constitutional mandates.  Indeed, the Kansas Supreme Court had recently been in such a back-and-forth with the legislature, ultimately approving of the legislative action taken in 2006 as discharging the legislature’s constitutional duties.  However, the most recent decision – Gannon v. State – criticized the legislature for cuts since that ruling and concluded “that the Legislature could not have possibly considered the actual costs of providing [a] suitable education in making its appropriations” between 2008 and 2012.  Governor Sam Brownback, whose zeal for small government and minimal tax burden helped (along with revenue shortfalls due to the economic downturn) create the cuts to education funding, was critical of the decision; the state has already appealed, but an affirmance would force the Governor to reluctantly find the revenue to return to public education.

However, the unusual part of this story comes from another lawsuit, Petrella v. Brownback, in which members of the suburban Kansas City Shawnee Mission school district have challenged the state’s cap on local taxes for education as unconstitutional under the federal constitution.  In essence, the plaintiffs desire to tax themselves at a higher rate than is permissible under state law.  According to the complaint, the cap “strips Plaintiffs and local citizens fo their fundamental freedom to use their own money to improve the public educaiton of their children.”  Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe is part of the plaintiffs’ legal team.  It is a fascinating legal theory on its own and, if successful, could undermine school finance schemes elsewhere, many of which rely upon similar caps or expenditure limits to ensure some measure of equity in school funding between property-rich and property-poor school districts.  The federal district court dismissed the case last year for lack of standing, but the Tenth Circuit reversed and remanded in October for a determination on the constitutional questions.  

Interestingly (though not surprisingly), parties who support the Gannon case and the push for more overall funding have opposed the Petrella plaintiffs’ claim - indeed, this is true of the Gannons themselves.  In the Gannon case, they are the named plaintiffs pushing the state to increase its funding, but they have also intervened on the state’s behalf in Petrella, claiming that the effect of allowing local taxation above the cap would lead to inequitable educational opportunities within the state.  (Of course, while they are named parties, the Gannons are not the primary movers here - rather, a conglomeration of school districts, Schools for Fair Funding, and their lawyers appear to be leading the charge)

Both suits, however, have as their underlying premise the idea that the state is not doing enough to fund public education.  In Gannon, the plaintiffs are looking to the state to provide more money directly; in Petrella, the plaintiffs are simply asking for the liberty to provide the increased money themselves.

Stay tuned as these two cases develop.  Gannon is up on appeal, while Petrella is back to the district court on remand.   The outcomes will affect not only the future of school financing, but also the viability of attempts like Governor Brownback’s to shrink government and lower taxes in the face of constitutional mandates to provide for education.