FRANKFORT, Ky. — A student-led lawsuit claims Kentucky’s education system has been backsliding for years since lawmakers enacted nationally renowned reforms. The students are seeking a ruling that the state is failing in its constitutional duty to provide all children with an adequate and equitable education.
The students, who attend high schools across Kentucky, say they want to hold the state accountable for what they see as its shortcomings in guaranteeing a quality education — regardless of whether a child lives in an affluent or impoverished school district.
“Generations before us fought to reimagine Kentucky schools, and we are here to ensure that promise is renewed for every student,” said Danielle Chivero, a student plaintiff who attends school in Lexington.
Plaintiffs include the Kentucky Student Voice Team, consisting of about 100 students statewide who attend public schools. Some of its members are plaintiffs. Defendants include the top leaders in the Republican-dominated legislature, the state Board of Education and the state education commissioner.
The state education department declined comment on the lawsuit Wednesday, and a spokesperson for the GOP Senate leadership said their office does not comment on pending litigation.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s office did not comment on the merits of the case but made another pitch for significantly higher education spending that the governor has included in his budget requests to lawmakers.
“Funding is vital to provide more competitive salaries for educators and to fund universal pre-K, which is needed to boost our workforce and ensure our kids are prepared for kindergarten,” James Hatchett, a Beshear spokesman, said in a statement.
Kentucky is the latest state to be sued over its disparities in education funding between wealthy and poor districts. Students, families and school districts in several other states –- including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Washington -– have filed similar legal challenges.
The lawsuits have forced some states to spend more money on schools, and to allocate the funding more equitably. But they often drag out for years, and state lawmakers do not always comply with court orders to change education funding.
The lawsuit in Kentucky, filed Tuesday in Franklin County Circuit Court in the state’s capital city, seeks to reopen the case that led to a landmark 1989 Kentucky Supreme Court ruling that the state’s K-12 system was inequitable and inadequate and ordered the legislature to fix it.
The result, a year later, was the Kentucky Education Reform Act, which reshaped the foundations of education, including a new school funding formula that the new lawsuit said increased funding for all students and aimed to ensure equity in funding among school districts. The Kentucky law, known as KERA, became a national model for education reforms in the 1990s, the lawsuit said.
In the first decade after KERA’s enactment, the gap in per-capita spending between poor and wealthier districts narrowed substantially, the lawsuit said. But in the past two decades, the state has failed to maintain adequate base funding amounts, putting a heavier financial burden on local districts, it said.
The result is a gap in per-capita spending between the poorest and wealthiest districts that exceeds the disparities deemed unconstitutional in 1989 by the state Supreme Court, the lawsuit said.
The student plaintiffs want a judge to decide whether Kentucky schoolchildren are receiving the adequate and equitable education that the state’s highest court mandated 36 years ago.
There are other shortcomings, the lawsuit said, including a decline in literacy skills among many students, a lack of civics education and the lack of adequate counseling resources at many Kentucky schools.
“The Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was the national model for effective education reform in the 1990s, has now fallen behind in educational practices and accomplishments,” the suit said.
Education funding is always a main focus when Kentucky lawmakers craft the state’s next budget. Republicans touted the amounts devoted to education in the two-year budget passed last year.
Per-pupil funding was increased under the state’s main funding formula for public K-12 schools, as was state funding for local districts’ transportation costs. The budget is steering more state money to poorer districts, and lawmakers bolstered state funding for the teachers pension system.
The lawsuit is fighting back against that narrative.
“Since the 1990s, base funding of education by the state has declined by approximately 25% in inflation-adjusted terms, and the state share of total education costs has fallen from 75% to 50%, placing a heavier and often unmanageable financial burden on local school districts,” the suit said.
Students said their lawsuit is no reflection on classroom teachers in Kentucky.
“This lawsuit targets systemic failures, not individual schools or teachers,” said Luisa Sanchez, a student plaintiff and a high school junior in Boyle County. “We see the dedication of educators every day, but the root cause of these challenges lies in state-level decision-making and resource inequities.”
The case is likely to end up before Kentucky’s Supreme Court, said Michael Rebell, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Given the time it takes to litigate the case, the older students involved as plaintiffs realize they won’t directly benefit from a favorable outcome, he said.
“Some of them talk about they hope their brothers and sisters will benefit,” he said Wednesday. “But most of them talk in terms of they’re doing this for the future and for Kentucky students that they don’t know.”
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Associated Press writer Moriah Balingit in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.