Top Kansas court to hear arguments on school funding

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May 21, 2018 - 11:00 PM

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas lawmakers are looking for hopeful hints from the state Supreme Court that they’ve increased education funding enough to satisfy the justices and head off any potential threat of a court order shuttering public schools.

But attorneys for four school districts suing the state were preparing to argue this morning that the plan lawmakers and Gov. Jeff Colyer settled on this spring, a $548 million increase phased in over five years, still falls as much as $1.5 billion short of providing a suitable education for every child. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a lawsuit filed by the districts in 2010, when this year’s high school graduates were fifth-graders.

The court ruled in October that the state’s current education funding of more than $4 billion a year isn’t sufficient under the Kansas Constitution, even with an increase approved last year. The school districts want the justices to declare that legislators are still short — and to order lawmakers to approve more spending by the end of June.

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