Shawnee Mission district can’t intervene in school funding case, Kansas Supreme Court rules

The Kansas Supreme Court won’t allow the Shawnee Mission School District to intervene in a lawsuit brought by four districts challenging state school financing.

The high court in Topeka on Monday affirmed a lower court’s decision to deny the district’s request. Shawnee Mission had argued that the four plaintiff districts and the state could not adequately represent its interests.

Attorneys for the plaintiff districts — Kansas City, Kan., Wichita, Dodge City and Hutchinson — argued against allowing Shawnee Mission to intervene, saying the request wasn’t timely. The lawsuit, Gannon v. Kansas, was filed in 2010.

In its request to intervene, the district said it receives less state money per pupil than the four districts in the suit and deserved that its interests be heard. The plaintiff districts challenged Shawnee Mission’s figures, saying Shawnee Mission’s per-pupil funding was among the highest in the state.

The Gannon lawsuit accuses the state of underfinancing schools and challenges the equity of funding among districts. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this fall on whether schools are equitably funded across the state. Whether the funding is adequate will be taken up in 2016.

The Supreme Court decision Monday said that the lower-court panel “reached the wrong conclusion” in determining that the Shawnee Mission district’s interests were adequately represented by the state. But the panel “did not abuse its discretion” in denying the district’s motion to intervene, it said. The lower-court panel was correct that the district’s request was untimely, the court said.

In the decision Monday, the court noted that nothing would prevent the district from filing an amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, brief in the equity portion of the lawsuit.

Shawnee Mission district officials could not be reached for comment.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Shawnee Mission district can’t intervene in school funding case, Kansas Supreme Court rules."