Kansas state legislators are locked in a balance-of-power fight with justices on the Kansas Supreme Court over how much of the state’s diminishing tax revenue to spend on educating children.
“For me, there’s another decision that really makes it more difficult to close schools — it’s the fact that many of our children won’t have food, the day that the school is closed, they count on coming to school for their meals.”
— Kansas City Kansas Superintendent Cynthia Lane
Life of the Law’s award-winning reporter Ashley Cleek reports on the fight from the classroom to courthouse. Throughout the state, teachers and school administrators are struggling with deep budget cuts, while in Topeka the funding fight has turned into a heated debate over the balance of power between the three branches of government.
PRODUCTION NOTES
Revolution in a Cornfield was reported by Ashley Cleek and edited by Annie Aviles with sound design and production by Shani Aviram. The team had production support from Alyssa Bernstein, Shani Aviram, Jonathan Hirsch, Kirsten Jusewicz-Haidle and Nancy Mullane.
Full transcript of Revolution in a Cornfield
SUGGESTED READING
- The Kansas Experiment New York Times:
- A Primer on Education Cases in Kansas KCUR
- Gannon Lawsuit
- Tense Meeting of the Manhattan Ogden School Board
- Research From the Center on Budget and Public Priorities
- Numbers from the Kansas Legislative Research Department
- Numbers from the Kansas State Department of Education
This episode of Life of the Law was funded in part by grants from the Open Society Foundation, the Law and Society Association, the Proteus Fund and the National Science Foundation,
and was sponsored by Squarespace.
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