By AP/KWMU
Jefferson City, MO – A group of more than 100 Missouri school districts has agreed to move forward with a lawsuit over the adequacy and equity of the state school funding system.
The Committee on Education Equality had a formal vote late yesterday, with 147 school districts agreeing to pursue a challenge of the funding formula rewritten a decade ago.
In 1990, education groups claimed that the school aid distribution method was unfair. A Cole County judge agreed, and in 1993, the Legislature enacted the current formula.
Generally, the school funding formula is intended to equalize total funding among districts, by providing less state aid to the wealthiest districts. But educators and citizens have complained for years that great disparity still exists between the richest and poorest schools.