Court Rules that if the Kansas Legislature Cannot Come Up With An Equitable School Finance System

"In short, if by the close of fiscal year 2016, ending June 30, the State is unable to satisfactorily demonstrate to this court that the legislature has complied with the will of the people as expressed in Article 6 of their constitution through additional remedial legislation or otherwise, then a lifting of the stay of today's mandate will mean no constitutionally valid school finance system exists through which funds for fiscal year 2017 can lawfully be raised, distributed, or spent."

. . . . "Without a constitutionally equitable school finance system, the schools in Kansas will be unable to operate beyond June 30." 303 Kan. at 743-44.

http://thinkprogress.org/education/2016/02/17/3750219/kansas-supreme-court-school-funding/

All State Education Funding Laws must meet two standards "Adequacy" and "Equity":

Adequacy Standard

Adequacy requires State's to provide every school district with sufficient funding to provide every student with a minimum education. A minimum education is instruction in state mandated minimum core subjects that align with minimum State Content Standards and Curriculum Frameworks.

* NOTE: When CUSD relies on fundraising and donations to pay for Art, Music and Science, those schools that cannot raise sufficient funds have to go without- then as a matter of law funding is inadequate because every student should receive instruction in all state mandated core educational subjects that align with mandated State Content Standards and Curriculum Frameworks. To get around this, the California Department of Education is now saying that under "Local Control" the State of California no longer has any mandated academic standards. Under "Local Control", subject content is now left to the discretion of the individual classroom teacher, the principal and the District. While the State "recommends" that instruction be aligned with minimum State Content Standards and Curriculum Frameworks, under "Local Control" it is no longer a "requirement".

See the CUSD Board discussion on this issue-

11-18-15 Count 16 of Federal Complaint- Fundraising for a Visual & Performing Arts Curriculum

11-18-15 November 18 BOT Meeting - Addressed the Board - Board Audio at 42:08

12-07-15 Formal Request to have an issue placed on BOT Meeting Agenda12-08-15 Request Granted - Item to be placed on the 1-27-16 BOT Meeting Agenda.

12-09-15 December 9, 2015 BOT Meeting - Addressed the Board - Board Audio at 1:10:27

01-02-16 Slide Presentation for the Board published on the internet

01-27-16BOT Meeting Agenda Item #5 - Fundraising for Core Educational Programs and Board Meeting Audio at 2:28:0 to 2:47:45

Equity Standard

"School districts must have reasonably equal access to substantially similar educational opportunity through similar tax effort." 298 Kan. at 1175." Gannon v. State, 303 Kan. 682, 709, 368 P.3d 1024 (2016) (Gannon II); see Gannon v. State, 298 Kan. 1107, 1110, 319 P.3d 1196 (2014) (Gannon I).

"Local Control"

A system of school finance allowing local revenue-raising authority, such as assessing levies on property within a school district, or allowing Counties, Cities and School Districts to levy personal income taxes and sales taxes creates wealth-based disparities among districts, and among schools within a district that violate equal protection laws of both the County and the State and are therefore unconstitutional.

Mark Tallman, Associate Executive Director for the Kansas Association of School Boards, described to the 2016 legislature-

"[O]ne of the challenges we see is that the more local funding you allow, the greater your challenge is to equalize it because there is such a range of local sources."

In sum, the Kansas Court ruled that the State may not allow children to receive disparate levels of educational opportunity on the basis of wealth, especially the property wealth of the district where they happen to live. See Gannon I, 298 Kan. at 1174

California's new Local Control Funding Formula is unconstitutional for the same reason.

The stated goal of California's new education funding law AB -97 School Finance - Local Control Funding Formula is to provide a base level of funding for every student (Base Grant), and then to provide additional funding for students with higher needs; students who are English Language Learners, Receiving Free and Reduced Lunch, or are in Foster Care (Supplemental Grant and Concentration Grant).

Per Pupil Funding = Base Grant + Supplemental Grant + Concentration Grant

The "Base Grant" is universal for all students.

The "Supplemental Grant" provides additional funding to Districts based on the percentage of students in the District that are English Language Learners, Receiving Free and Reduced Lunch, or are in Foster Care.

The "Concentration Grant" provides even more funding for Districts that have large concentrations of students that are English Language Learners, Receiving Free and Reduced Lunch, or are in Foster Care.

Source: California Department of Education Local Control Funding Formula Overview http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcffoverview.asp

For LCFF to be constitutional, the Base Grant must be sufficient to provide every student with:

"Equal Opportunity to Achieve a Quality Education" as defined by the California courts in [Serrano v. Priest II (1976) 18 Cal. 3d 748] to be "...opportunity to obtain high quality staff, program expansion and variety, beneficial teacher- pupil ratios and class sizes, modern equipment and materials, and high-quality buildings."

Districts with low percentages of students who are English Language Learners, Receiving Free and Reduced Lunch, or are in Foster Care are being funded solely by the Base Grant.

To meet it's constitutional mandate (Cal. Const. art. XVI, §8), the State of California must set the Base Grant at an amount that is sufficient to provide every student with substantially equal opportunities to achieve a quality education.

In 2006 the State of California commissioned a study entitled "Efficiency And Adequacy in California School Finance: A Professional Judgement Approach To Determine The Cost To Adequately Educate A Student". Results of that study (2007-08) concluded that per pupil costs with special needs weightings were found to be:

• Average: $11,094 to $12,365
• Urban: $11,508 to $12,718
• Suburban: $10,726 to $12,077
• Towns: $ 8,932 to $ 9,896
• Rural: $10,615 to $11,881

Source: https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/19-AIR-PJP-Report(3-07).pdf at page xii

When the State of California implemented LCFF the State of California set the Base Funding Grant at $6,500 per pupil, and limited per pupil funding to 2007-08 levels of funding + inflation not to be reach until 2021; the State knowingly and intentionally set the Base Funding Grant below what it knew was the cost to provide a minimum education to students, and did so with the intention of forcing wealthy districts to equalize funding through increased local taxes and facilities bonds.

So while the Kansas Court found that the Kansas Education funding law discriminated against poor districts that could not equalize funding through local sources, the California Education Funding Formula discriminates against "wealthy" districts assuming that they will have the means to equalize funding through increased local tax and school facilities bonds.

State's that pass laws that discriminate on the basis of wealth, race or ethnicity violate the equal protections laws of the Federal Constitution. When a State enacts a law, the law must be applied to all people equally.

Just as Kansas cannot institute an education funding law that provides less educational opportunity to poor school districts, California cannot institute an education funding law that discriminates against districts' with a low percentage of students who are ELL, receiving Free and Reduced Lunch and/or are in Foster Care.

The State of California is currently enjoying the greatest general fund tax revenue in its history, estimated to exceed $125 billion in revenue; in 2007-08 tax revenues were $103 billion.
Source: http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/information/documents/CHART-A.pdf

By any measure, the Governor and the State Legislature have sufficient funding to provide every student with a "quality education", but are choosing not to spend money as constitutionally mandated. The State is intentionally underfunding only certain districts (Districts with a low percentage of students who are ELL, receiving Free and Reduced lunch and/or are in Foster Care) so that "surplus" tax revenues can be spent on new programs and entitlements that are not constitutionally mandated. If the Governor and the State would like to change the State's Constitutionally mandated spending priorities, they must do so with a Constitutional Amendment. California's new LCFF law, as currently written (with a base grant of $6,500 per pupil, and limiting increases in per pupil funding to 2007-08 levels + inflation), does not provide sufficient funding for all students to achieve equality of educational opportunity. As a matter of law, LCFF is unconstitutional.

This article is to long for the patch- the full article can be read at:

http://disclosurecusd.blogspot.com/2016/06/court-rules-that-if-kansas-legislature.html