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May 12, 2005

Lawsuits continuing to impact legislative funding debates

Here is a good look at how one state legislature is trying to come up with an equitable school finance plan amid not only plenty of urban-rural bickering, but constant pressure from funding lawsuits. Missouri House members stayed up late this week, approving a school-funding bill that sets a minimum level of annual spending for all schoolchildren in the state. That's a departure from the current system, which bases state aid almost exclusively on local property tax factors. But there were many issues along the way: "Most lawmakers have generally agreed that school districts in metropolitan areas like St. Louis should get extra money because they face higher labor costs," reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "But deciding how much to give those districts, and which school districts qualify has split lawmakers."

On Wednesday, lawmakers from both state houses agreed on a bill. The Senate majority leader has high hopes: "He said the proposed formula might persuade many of the 250 school districts suing the state over the fairness and adequacy of the current formula to drop their legal challenges," reports the Kansas City Star. But legislators may have shot themselves in the foot, goes one analysis. "The House also added language that said the bill would go into effect only if the legal challenges filed by school districts over the current formula are dropped. Sen. Matt Bartle, a Lee's Summit Republican on the House-Senate conference committee, said such a requirement could kill the entire formula. If a handful of districts refused to drop their lawsuits, the formula wouldn't go into effect.

"'This isn't going to stop anything. We're still going to be litigating well into the future,' Bartle said."

The Texas Senate passed a public education funding overhaul Wednesday. The so-called Robin Hood component of the state's school finance system, in which 135 school districts now give money back to the state for redistribution, would be scaled back to 102 districts, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. A judge in that state has ruled that Texas' education funding plan unconstitutional.

Posted May 12, 2005 12:00 AM