Gannon VI: The Return of the Montoy

Yesterday the State Supreme Court issued the latest decision in the Gannon series of cases regarding school finance. The most eagerly awaited sixth part to a series since Fast and Furious 6 (RIP Paul Walker) was a bit anti-climactic if you’re someone who was waiting for the court to judicially abuse the state legislature. If you’re the state, the ruling was about the best you could hope for considering the circumstances.

Basically the state is in compliance with both adequacy and equity. The court is retaining jurisdiction over the case until June 30 of next year, but that’s essentially to allow the state to adjust for inflation without any kind of bull-shittery thrown in. It should be noted that the state pretty much lucked out on a couple of things. First, the court essentially took these studies that showed the state needed massive amounts of new funding and threw them out the window. The court could’ve easily said, “hey, you have these studies that you commissioned based on these educational outcomes. It is not any of our business whether or not the state can afford those outcomes. These are the outcomes you, the people of Kansas’ chosen representatives, selected.” But they didn’t do that. Which leads to the second piece of luck for the state: the court adopted their argument about the “Montoy safe harbor”. Here’s why this is lucky, for the last eight years, the court has given almost no indication that Montoy was all that relevant. In fact, they explicitly threw out a lower court ruling that essentially adopted this view because it was the wrong standard. Essentially, the state took a gamble that said, “maybe the court is as tired of dealing with this crap as we are”, and it worked.

Here is the frustrating thing for me, as someone who has followed this case as closely as I have for almost a decade: we, the state of Kansas, wasted approximately eight years of kids’ futures to end up essentially right back where we started. In the first blog about Gannon that I did four years ago, I stated that all the state had to do was take the Montoy dollars and adjust it for inflation. And all the court had to do was say, “hey, we’ve got this Gannon case here. It is basically the same thing that we did five years ago. Do what you did then and we’re in good shape.” Instead, the court adopted the Rose standards (for apparently no reason at all) and told the three judge panel to base their ruling on that. Not on Montoy! So then the state starts getting into all this bull-shittery about scrapping the old formula and trying to gimmick their way into compliance with the court. At this point, the court has to begin the slow walk of telling the state (without actually telling them) that the old formula was fine, it just wasn’t funded adequately.

Flash forward to 2018. What are we left with? We are left with the Kansas School Equity and Enhancement Act (KSEEA) which could have just been called the SDFQPA II because it is essentially the same formula as the old one with a few minor tweaks here and there, and a minimum requirement that districts raise an additional 15% of their budget’s locally (which passed equity muster which I pretty thoroughly disagree with). On top of the formula being the same, the court adopted the “Montoy safe harbor” theory as an adequate funding amount which is the same damn thing the three judge panel used eight years ago!

At this point, there is entire class of students that from kindergarten to graduation that experienced an underfunded education system. There is plenty of blame to go around. No doubt, the legislature’s decision to scrap the old formula for the block grants all because they were being pouty that a court held them to the standards set forth in the state constitution probably doubled the amount of time it took to settle this. In fact, the reason this took so long to resolve is almost entirely because of legislative intransigence. But don’t get me wrong, the court is not blameless here. Gannon VI essentially wipes out everything that happened in Gannons I-V. Which, if you ask me, is a complete waste of time. I take no issue in the “Montoy safe harbor” theory of adequacy. I said at the beginning that that would be the easiest way to accomplish adequacy. But you know who else could’ve said that? The state supreme court. Instead we had this weird Rose standard detour that explicitly stated that the state doesn’t have to follow Montoy. But even the Rose standard would have been a fine remedy. Instead, it was almost like the court forgot they had adopted them. Nothing in Gannon VI states how the new money advances the standards set forth in Rose in Kansas, so why even bring it up?

Here is my guess about the overall direction of Gannon: at the beginning, the court was worried about mandating a specific dollar amount, and for good reason. Because of that worry, the court adopted what numerous other states of adopted, Rose, with the assumption that the legislature would see the fix approved in Montoy and work toward that dollar amount anyway. From there, a legislature and a governor dominated by legislators acting in bad faith, saw this as an opportunity to advance an agenda that isn’t exactly high on public education. Which led to the court trying to walk this legislative horse to water, but despite repeatedly smashing its face into the trough couldn’t seem to make it drink. That led to 2016 and 2017 when a more moderate legislature and a new governor, dying of thirst, decided to open their mouths and let the water rush in. At this point, the court, I think, was so fed up and frustrated with this process that even getting close was enough for them to give the state a pass assuming they don’t decide to screw the whole thing up next session (or have a governor *cough, Kobach, cough* that refuses to sign anything giving even one more penny to school districts).

All in all, I’m pleased with the outcome. I’m frustrated by the wasted years, and by the responses from conservative legislators , but as long as this is resolved next session my frustrations amount to nothing more than the frustration of a parent whose child fights eating their vegetables at every turn before finally doing so.