Topeka ? After listening to a host of speakers criticizing the new school finance plan Tuesday, 10-year-old Catherine Norwood of Lawrence summed up her feelings about it.

“I don’t like it because we want all schools to be equal,” she said.

Catherine, her twin sister, Emma, and their mother, Deborah Summers-Norwood, a teacher, were among more than a dozen Lawrence residents who attended a rally sponsored by Kansas Families United for Public Education at the Capitol.

The rally, which drew about 75 people from across the state, was conducted on the day of the deadline set by the Kansas Supreme Court for the Legislature to fix the school finance system.

In January, the court set an April 12 deadline for lawmakers to increase school funding and distribute those funds more equitably.

The Legislature adopted a $125 million increase that has no statewide tax increase but could open the door to nearly $500 million in local property tax increases.

KFUPE, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, legislators, educators and clergy blasted the proposal for failing to provide enough funds and widening the disparity between property-rich and property-poor districts.

The court, which received the bill last week, has not indicated when it will review the proposal.

“The battle is onward and upward,” Sebelius said. “We need to have a plan that takes us into the future.”

Dressed in a judge's robe, Shane Gagnebin, right, from Bonner Springs, prepares to go

Local tax increases

Al Gyles, a Free State High School math instructor, was one of several Lawrence teachers who attended the rally.

He criticized lawmakers who pushed the decision on whether to raise taxes onto local school boards.

“The concept of no new taxes may sound good, but it really makes the children of Kansas suffer,” he said.

Barb Thompson, a sixth-grade teacher at Quail Run School, said she expected the state Supreme Court to reject the legislative plan because it fails to provide adequate funds.

6News video: Supporters go to bat for education funding Sebelius: Schools plan is ‘recipe for financial disaster’ (04-09-05) School finance plan delivered to state Supreme Court (04-07-05) School advocates want nearly $1 billion, special master (04-06-05) More about School Finance

“When the court strikes it, I don’t want to hear lawmakers crying ‘activist judges,'” she said.

Dawn Hawkins, the mother of a New York School student, said, “It’s just outrageous that the Kansas Legislature thinks it is immune to the law that the court laid down.”

Other teachers and parents complained that the lack of funding increases in recent years has led to oversized classrooms, teacher burnout and crumbling facilities.

Adela Solis, a fifth-grade teacher at Cordley School, said the Lawrence district had “cut to the bone. There is no more give-and-take; we have gone through all that.”

Widening gap

In 1992, the base state aid per pupil was $3,600. It is now $3,863 per pupil, and if spending had kept pace with inflation it would have been $4,777 per student, Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley, of Topeka, said.

Emma Norwood, 10, left, her mother, Deborah Summers-Norwood, and twin sister, Catherine, applaud a speaker during a rally at the Statehouse calling for an increase in funding for public education. Emma and Catherine attend Quail Run School in Lawrence; their mother is a teacher at Schwegler School in Lawrence. The family attended the rally Tuesday in Topeka.

Hensley and others also criticized the plan’s reliance on local property taxes; they said it would worsen the gap between rich and poor districts.

For example, 17 districts with the highest property wealth, including Lawrence, will be able to raise $26 million in local property taxes to supplement teacher salaries. That is the same amount of increased funding for the entire state’s at-risk students, he said.

He said the plan “thumbs its nose at the Supreme Court.”

But House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, a supporter of the plan, defended it and was adamant in his opposition to a tax increase.

“Any additional increase to school funding that may be ordered by the court will have to come from the existing budget, probably in the form of across-the-board cuts,” he said.

Some at the rally dressed up in judges’ robes and “stepped up to the plate” with plastic bats. The rally also featured singing and a jazz combo; attendees then walked across the street from the Capitol to write messages in chalk on the sidewalk outside the Kansas Judicial Center, where the Kansas Supreme Court is located.

John Rios, principal of Argentine Middle School in Kansas City, Kan., called on the court to take action.

“The students of Kansas are awake. It’s time for our state Legislature and state court system to wake up, too,” he said.