Will the Kansas Supreme Court reopen what has been can of worms for the Kansas Legislature? The answer will be revealed 9:30 Friday morning.

Through its spokesman, the high court said Thursday afternoon that the justices will rule on a motion by a group made up of nearly 80 Kansas school districts to reopen the landmark court case Ryan Montoy, et al., v. State of Kansas, et al.

Montoy was filed in 1999 and after seven years of court rulings and legislative bickering, the supreme court ruled that the constitution requires legislators to properly fund public education and that the way the state funded public education was unconstitutional and ordered the Legislature either to fix the problems or face the specter of all public schools being closed.

Under the lash of the court ruling, legislators crafted a three-year program that increased the amount of aid it gave to school districts by nearly $1 billion but began dipping heavily into state reserves to bankroll it.

However, state revenues have fallen for four years and the decline in revenues and the rocky economy have resulted in a state budget crisis. Because the state constitution forbids deficits, the legislators and Gov. Mark Parkinson have steadily cut the amount of state aid it gives to schools, which sparked the request to reopen Montoy by the Schools for Fair Funding.

The heart of the state’s funding mechanism is a state-wide property tax levy. The money goes into a central fund which is distributed to the state’s school districts on a per-pupil basis according to a variety of formulas. The effect is that wealthier areas such as Johnson County, western Kansas counties with extensive natural gas deposits and counties with certain facilities such as power plants, subsidize the more numerous and less wealthy and more rural school districts.