Author: SeniorWomenWeb

The lawsuit was neither unexpected nor unfamiliar. Kansas schools have been arguing with lawmakers for years over school appropriations, filing lawsuits that have frequently ended up in the state Supreme Court. In 2006, the dispute appeared to have been laid to rest when the court signed off on the legislature’s decision to send an additional $755 million to the schools. But state budget cuts last year slashed $303 million in education spending. And so the districts are back in the courts.

Kansas is far from alone in this respect. School funding suits also are working their way through court systems in California, New Jersey and Indiana. More are likely to be filed in the months ahead, as legislatures – confronted with yet another year of deep budget cuts – opt to scale back education spending. School officials and attorneys in Texas and New Mexico already have talked about pursuing legal action. Education policy experts say the coming legislative sessions could set off a whole new wave of school districts dragging lawmakers to the courthouse.

“Some of them may say the only recourse they have is to challenge the funding mechanism,” says Robert Toutkoushian, a professor of higher education at the University of Georgia.

Over the past two years, schools got by on cash reserves, stimulus money and other forms of federal aid to prop up their budgets. But with reserves drained and stimulus funds about to run dry, many education officials are likely to find themselves struggling with drastic cuts in funding at a time when the economy remains sluggish.

Equal vs. adequate

Since the 1970’s, all but six states have seen funding lawsuits brought by school districts and school advocates. The first wave of cases centered on the question of whether funds were being equitably distributed, since high property-tax districts could afford to send more money to schools than less well-off areas. Those cases met with limited success.

Starting in the 1980’s, school advocates shifted their strategy and began relying on requirements in most state constitutions that governments provide adequate education for a state’s children. Those efforts picked up steam after the No Child Left Behind Act and various state initiatives imposed benchmarks that school districts were required to meet. Advocates argued that students could not meet standardized test targets without increases in school funding. About two-thirds of those cases were successful, according to the National Access Network, which tracks school finance lawsuits.

In most cases, courts ruled that lawmakers had to determine how much money it would cost to provide an adequate education and then commit to spending that money. In New York, for instance, a long-running lawsuit ended in 2007 when lawmakers agreed to allocate roughly $7 billion for the state’s schools, to be phased in over four years.

One result of these cases was to shift more responsibility for school funding away from local governments and onto the states. Instead of relying on local property taxes, schools now relied more heavily on state tax revenues. When the economy was strong, it wasn’t hard for lawmakers to promise more money without having to raise taxes. But the fiscal crisis of the past couple of years has forced state governments to cut back, to the dismay of education advocates.