The Kansas Supreme Court struck down a stopgap law for funding the state's public schools on Thursday, saying it left poor districts $54 million short.
The justices unanimously ruled that the Republican-backed law doesn't comply with the Kansas Constitution and gave lawmakers until the end of June to write a new law. The high court has yet to decide on the larger question of whether Kansas must boost its education spending by at least $548 million a year.
Lawmakers approved the 2015 law as temporary fix to replace a per-student formula for distributing more than $4 billion a year to school in favor of stable "block grants." The law was meant to give lawmakers time to devise another system for distributing more $4 billion a year in aid to its 286 public school districts.
But the Supreme Court ruled that the temporary law, which was set to expire in July 2017, violates the Kansas Constitution's requirement that the state finance a suitable education for every student.
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