By MICHAEL STRAND

Salina Journal

The Salina School District was one of the founding members of Schools for Fair Funding more than a decade ago. Monday night, two other school districts in Saline County will consider joining the group, as well.

The Ell-Saline School Board discussed joining the group in October but delayed action until its November meeting.

The Southeast of Saline School Board is also scheduled to discuss joining the group at its meeting Monday night.

Schools for Fair Funding was organized in the late 1990s to press lawmakers in Topeka to increase school funding. In 1999, the group of midsize districts filed a lawsuit against the state, which came to be known as the Montoy case and which resulted in funding to public schools increasing by about $1 billion.

Since that time, however, a slumping economy and decreasing tax revenues have caused the state to cut school funding to roughly the level before the case was settled.

In the past few months, many new districts statewide have joined the organization and have begun discussing filing a new lawsuit.

"We're going to try to make a decision on joining or not," Southeast of Saline Superintendent Justin Henry said. "The action may be not to take any action, but it may be 'yes' or 'no.' "

Henry said the reason he's bringing this to the board now is that the next meeting of Schools for Fair Funding is Friday and he'd like a decision before that meeting.

Ell-Saline Superintendent Jerry Minneman said the organization has expanded its scope beyond the original midsize districts and noted that "the previous litigation did help all districts."

"It's not just a niche group, and the funding cuts are hurting everybody," Henry said.

Currently, the organization charges member districts $2 a pupil, but that's expected to increase to $5 a pupil if a new lawsuit is filed.

"If we're agreeing to be in, we're agreeing to be all the way in," Henry said.

n Reporter Mike Strand can be reached at 822-1418 or by e-mail at mstrand@salina.com.

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