Topeka — Kansas may need to spend roughly $2 billion a year in additional funding for public schools in order to meet the Kansas Supreme Court’s standard for a constitutional funding system, according to a new study delivered to lawmakers Friday.
The numbers came as a shock to some lawmakers, especially those who were anticipating the consultants who wrote the report were hired specifically for the purpose of coming up with a much lower number.
“I’ll admit, I’m surprised,” House Democratic Leader Jim Ward of Wichita, one of the early skeptics of the study, said after hearing a summary of the report. “But I’m really happy that it really validated what happened in (earlier) studies, which is, money matters. For better outcomes, you’ve got to spend money.”
