By Charles Wolfe
The Associated Press

FRANKFORT - A group of Kentucky school districts decided Thursday to sue the General Assembly on a claim that they are so underfunded they cannot guarantee an adequate education for all students.

A lawsuit is likely to be filed in Franklin County Circuit Court before Labor Day, the group's president, Covington Superintendent Jack Moreland, said after a meeting.

The coalition, organized as the Council for Better Education, has armed itself for court with consultant studies that claim that an "adequate" school system - a system capable of meeting the state's education goals - would require the state to spend at least $5 billion a year on elementary and secondary education. It currently spends $4.1 billion.

The council successfully sued the legislature over equity of funding in 1985. That led to the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act, under which school funding was markedly increased.

Since then, school costs have soared and Kentucky's tax base has been eroded with tax cuts, many educators say.

"I've seen the dismantlement of a lot of our education goals and objectives," said David Baird, superintendent of Eminence Independent schools. "Quite frankly, I'm not willing to just sit back and watch."

The council has 164 of the state's 176 school districts in its membership. Baird and Moreland were among 17 superintendents who met at the Capitol on Thursday. All voted to go to court. Others weighed in by e-mail in recent days, and all but two favored a lawsuit, Moreland said.

Earl Melloy, superintendent of McLean County schools, said some of his colleagues in western Kentucky supported going to court but questioned "the appropriateness and timing of it" because the legislature "tried to spare elementary and secondary education" in the lean budget enacted earlier this year.

The 1985 lawsuit, filed by 66 "property poor" districts, charged that the state's funding scheme was inequitable, making it impossible for districts without big tax bases to offer the same quality of education as more affluent districts.

The state Supreme Court agreed and in 1989 declared the public school system unconstitutional. The court also said the General Assembly was solely responsible for providing an adequate system.

Unlike the equity issue, which causes some districts to be pitted against others, adequacy "is that issue that every district in the state can galvanize around ... because that means we all go up together," Moreland said.

The General Assembly's budget committee chairmen - Republican Sen. Richie Sanders and Democratic Rep. Harry Moberly - said legislators did not resent or necessarily oppose a lawsuit.

"I think it will be helpful," Moberly, of Richmond, said in an interview. But he said it must be noted that many schools are "doing quite well" with current funding.

Sanders, of Franklin, said it is true that elementary and secondary education have been getting a progressively smaller percentage of the state's General Fund. He said that was because of unavoidable increases in spending on prisons and Medicaid.