The Kansas Supreme Court is ending its oversight into public K-12 education funding, closing a lengthy public lawsuit in the process.
The Supreme Court had held funding oversight for several years as part of Gannon. v. State of Kansas. In its order Tuesday, the high court says the state has fully funded public education the past five years, thus meeting the court’s mandate to meet requirements for both funding adequacy and equity.
This decision means schools wanting to challenge funding, either for adequacy, equity or both, would have to start at the district court level and work through the legal process.
Governor Laura Kelly urged lawmakers not to cut public education funding afterward, saying “our students can’t afford to turn back the clock — not back to tax experiments funded by school budget cuts, to four-day school weeks or to costly lawsuits.”
