Crane Elementary Sch. Dist. v. State of Arizona, No. 04-0076 (Ariz. App. Nov. 22, 2006)
An Arizona appellate court has upheld a trial court’s 2003 dismissal of a suit brought by a coalition of school districts that claimed the state’s funding scheme for public education violates the Arizona constitution’s guarantee of a "basic education." However, the intermediate appeals court rejected the lower court’s reasoning that this issue is a nonjusticiable political question that asks for courts "to assume the role that belongs to the legislature and its designees." Instead, the appeals court found that the school districts had failed to present evidence sufficient to demonstrate that the finance system is constitutionally inadequate. The districts filed suit in 2001, alleging the state was failing to "provide the programs that are necessary in order for at-risk students to achieve the state’s prescribed academic standards." They contended that (1) the right to a basic education is guaranteed by the Arizona Constitution; (2) the inadequacy of the state’s funding scheme forced them to divert resources from other students to at-risks students to enable at-risk students to meet the state’s mandated academic standard; and (3) as a result, school districts have less than the minimum base level of funding with which to educate students without specials needs, thereby violating the state constitution. The state asked the lower court to dismiss the case, arguing that addressing the academic needs of at-risk students was a policy question for the state legislature and that judicial involvement would violate the principle of separation of powers. The state also contended its school finance system satisfied the "general and uniform education" provision of the state constitution by allocating approximately the same amount of funds per student for each school district. The lower court granted the state’s motion for summary judgment.
The Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed but took issue with the lower court’s finding as to justiciability. The appellate court found unpersuasive decisions from some other states such as Committee for Educational Rights v. Edgar, 672 N.E.2d 1178 (Ill. 1996), in which the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a similar claim by a coalition of Illinois school districts on the ground that constitutional challenges to public school financing schemes pose nonjusticiable political questions. Instead, the appeals court looked to the reasoning of the Texas Supreme Court in Neeley v. West Orange-Cove Consolidated School District, 176 S.W.3d 746 (Tex. 2005), which rejected the notion that constitutional challenges to state school finance systems are nonjusticiable and cited cases from 15 other states. Indeed, precisely because of the concept of separation of powers, the Arizona court reasoned, the judicial branch has a duty to interpret funding statutes to determine if the legislature is complying with its constitutional duty. The court found support for this position in the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling in Roosevelt Elementary School District No. 66 v. Bishop, 877 P.2d 806 (1994), which struck down a previous funding scheme, and its progeny. The high court would not repeatedly have found state school finance schemes devised by the legislature unconstitutional had it "entertained any notion that the School Districts’ claims presented a nonjusticiable political question."
The appellate court went on to reject the school districts’ claim that because the finance system "relies on [a] funding formula that is arbitrary and unrelated to the cost of providing a basic education," it violates the general and uniform education clause of the state constitution. The court could find no support for this argument in the Arizona Supreme Court’s previous school finance cases. The districts had failed to produce the evidence needed to sustain, beyond a reasonable doubt, their argument that "the maintenance and operations component of the public school finance system deprives at-risk students of an opportunity to meet academic standards." They sought to meet this burden by demonstrating that a disproportionate number of students from lower income homes performed poorly on the state’s standardized achieve tests. However, the court concluded, nothing in the state constitution requires the legislature "to formulate and fund educational plans designed to overcome disparities that it had no role in creating and are not caused by inadequacies in the educational system."
Crane Elementary Sch. Dist. v. State of Arizona, No. 04-0076 (Ariz. App. Nov. 22, 2006)
[Full opinion]
[Editor’s Note: The news article below indicates an appeal is likely. The Texas decision the court looked to is summarized at the second link. This is a different suit from the one brought in federal court challenging Arizona’s funding of English language learner programs. Background on that case is provided at the third link.]
Arizona Republic
Howard (Capitol Media Services)
[Full story]
[NSBA School Law pages on Neeley v. West Orange-Cove Consol. Sch. Dist.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Flores v. Horne]