by Sam Zeff, KCUR and Kansas News Service
The Kansas Legislature isn’t close to coming up with a school funding formula.
However, lawmakers are working on a bill that looks a lot like the formula they scrapped in 2015 for block grants.
That bill, and the struggle this session to write it, is not just back from the past, but back 25 years from the past. That’s when another school funding suit bogged down the session.
When the history of Kansas school finance lawsuits is written — whenever that may be — two names will loom large. And they’re not governors, attorneys general or legislative bigwigs.
The first name is Judge Terry Bullock.
Many Kansans have never heard of Bullock, who served 30 years on the Shawnee County District Court. But his rulings are, essentially, the law.
Bullock was a player in three school funding cases — the first in 1992.
“So I’ve had quite a lot of exposure to these kinds of pieces of litigation,” Bullock said.
The other name is Alan Rupe, who is still in the game.
Rupe has been suing Kansas for nearly 30 years over school funding and is right in the middle of the current case. He says it reminds him of the 1992 suit, Montoy v. Kansas.
“It feels like Montoy when the … Kansas Legislature adopted a formula that did not pass Supreme Court muster and we went into a special session, went on the cusp of a constitutional meltdown,” Rupe said.
Constitutional meltdown. Special session. Sound familiar?
This year’s House bill would provide extra money for students who are poor, English language learners or live a long way from school, among other things.
Rupe said that’s basically the same formula hammered out in a settlement conference 25 years ago in the state Supreme Court.
“I can remember that session because, I think, it was supposed to start at 10 o’clock and Governor (Joan) Finney and then-Attorney General Bob Stephan remained in the hallway because neither wanted to enter the room before the other one did,” he said.
Finally, Rupe said, one of them came to their senses and Bullock set the group, including lawyers and legislative leaders, to work.
“I reminded them that everybody in the case — everybody, including me — was being paid by the state,” Bullock said. “It seemed to me if we could get this case resolved in a reasonable manner that it would be a wise thing for the public and a good thing for the schoolchildren.”
In a few hours, the group came back to the court with a deal that put hundreds of millions of additional dollars into public schools and ended the Montoy case.
Alas, the Legislature reneged on that settlement a couple of years later. And that eventually led to the Gannon suit hanging over the Legislature as it tries to pass a school funding formula that the high court will bless.
“I’ve had quite a lot of exposure to these kinds of pieces of litigation.”
Bullock said it’s hard to watch history repeat itself.
“So it’s frustrating for me, of course, but more importantly, I think, for the families and the children who watch some districts have all the funds needed,” Bullock said. “Some of the districts in my cases had so little that they couldn’t buy classroom textbooks. They didn’t have pencils and paper. And yet other schools, for example, had a full-size Olympic swimming pool for the recreation time for the children.”
Rupe said he also is frustrated. Gone is the attitude of everyone — legislators to lawyers to state leaders — rolling up their sleeves to negotiate school funding.
“I don’t think you could get that group into one room,” he said. “I don’t think that there is a room that would hold those folks in a fashion where people could work through the issues.”
The days of working together, Rupe said, seem to be over.
Sam Zeff covers education for KCUR and the Kansas News Service and is co-host of the political podcast Statehouse Blend Kansas. Follow him on Twitter @SamZeff. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to KCUR.org.
See more at http://kcur.org/post/kansas-lawmakers-look-past-find-way-forward-school-funding-formula.