By Mike Norman
mnorman@star-telegram.com
For David Thompson, the latest school finance lawsuit filed against the state by Fort Worth, Keller, Dallas, Denton, Houston, Austin and 77 other Texas school districts hinges first on one word: why.
As in, why do we have public schools, anyway?
Thompson, a Houston attorney, will argue the case. Four other groups of plaintiffs have filed suits, and all five have been combined into one case set for trial in Austin starting Oct. 22.
Another plaintiff group representing charter schools is expected to be added to the same case.
It is the state's sixth round of school finance litigation since 1984. Each round has started with weeks of district court arguments and ended months later with a state Supreme Court ruling saying the school funding plan is a mess and the Legislature has to fix it.
Thompson knows the
why of public schools. We all do.
It was written into the Texas Constitution in 1876 and has not changed: Public education ("the general diffusion of knowledge") is "essential to the preservation of liberties and rights of the people."
The constitution goes on to require the Legislature "to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools."
That order from the people of Texas to their state government has been behind all of the school finance lawsuits, but our legislators still can't get it right.
It's not that hard to understand. People can't fully exercise their liberties and their rights if they are excluded from the common body of knowledge.
What are the latest things to go wrong for Texas school funding? Thompson breaks it down into three parts (the other plaintiffs mostly address the same issues from different points of view):
An unconstitutional state property tax, the same thing that caused the Supreme Court to toss out the school finance system in 2005. The Legislature revised school finance laws in 2006.
The constitution says the state can't levy a property tax. Lawmakers can't cook up a scheme that does the same thing but calls it something else.
School districts levy local property taxes to help finance schools. If they have to spend all that money doing what the state tells them to do, that means the state has taken over control of the tax and it is in effect a state property tax.
Thompson says some districts in his plaintiff group levy property taxes at the maximum rate allowed by law and still have no money to pay for local priorities beyond meeting state requirements.
An inefficient distribution of state funds. On a per-student basis, districts across the state receive vastly different amounts of money for reasons not related to the cost of meeting legislative standards for the "general diffusion of knowledge." Some funding criteria have not been reviewed for years.
An inadequate amount of money in the system. So-called "adequacy" suits on public education funding historically have been difficult to prove in states across the U.S. Who's to say whether schools can't do more with less?
Still, this is a crucial argument for Thompson's case and for Fort Worth, Dallas and other school districts that back him. Their key point: The cost of education is measurable.
The state has sharply ratcheted up education requirements with the new STAAR tests and end-of-course exams.
At the same time, population growth is adding almost 90,000 new students per year to Texas public schools, many of them from economically disadvantaged and demonstrably difficult-to-educate groups.
Still, the Legislature cut overall per-student funding by $5.4 billion for the 2012-13 biennium.
Finally, Thompson has added a new element to this round of litigation. He asks that courts require the state to conduct a study, under court-set standards, of the cost of meeting state educational goals.
It would be hard for the Legislature to escape spending at least as much as the study shows is needed to meet state goals.
It means some districts might get more money than they get now, but some might get less. That would make it uncomfortable for lawmakers representing get-less districts.
Mike Norman is editorial director of the Star-Telegram / Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County. 817-390-7830Twitter: @mnorman9
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