BOULDER, CO (April 23, 2026) — In this month’s episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña is joined by Michael Rebell, a leading expert in civic education and school finance litigation and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and Luisa Sanchez, a student at Boyle County High School in Kentucky. Sanchez is a member of the Kentucky Student Voice Team and a plaintiff in Kentucky Student Voice Team v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, a case challenging the state to deliver on its constitutional obligation to provide an adequate education for all students. Together, she and Rebell walk listeners through the Kentucky case and situate it within the longer history of school finance adequacy litigation in the United States.
Rebell traces a 50-year movement in which advocates have turned to state courts to challenge funding systems built on unequal property taxes. Plaintiffs have since filed adequacy cases in 48 states, and Kentucky sits at the heart of that history. Its 1989 Rose decision defined what an adequate education requires and prompted a sweeping overhaul of the state’s schools in the 1990s. Rebell notes that since the 2008 recession, Kentucky’s legislature has steadily chipped away at both funding and enforcement of the educational standard outlined by the Kentucky Supreme Court, leaving today’s students without the education Rose once promised.
Sanchez brings that long history into the present. She immigrated to the United States at age seven, moved from a well-resourced New York school to a rural Kentucky one, and joined the Kentucky Student Voice Team in 2023. Now a named plaintiff in the case, she has helped lead intergenerational forums across the state alongside Harvard law students, gathering testimony from young people, educators, and community members about what an adequate education should look like. In their case, she and her peers ask not only for stronger funding but also for lasting structures that give students a voice in the policy decisions shaping their schools.
Both guests are candid about what this work demands. Sanchez describes balancing school, family, and public advocacy, while Rebell points to the slow grind of litigation and the state’s technical appeals. Their advice to others is direct. Sanchez tells adults in power not to underestimate young people, and to build real channels for student voice inside the institutions that serve them. Rebell urges lawyers and advocates to keep turning to state courts, which he finds closer to the people and more responsive about education than the federal bench has been in recent years. Sanchez also points listeners to the team’s new book, Why Kentucky Students Are Suing the State: Classroom, Courts, and the Constitution, which lays out the case in plain language and reflects the youth-led, intergenerational spirit behind it.
A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.
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