Arkansas Failing its Schools
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Nov. 21) - Arkansas has failed its 450,000 public school children by not devoting enough money to schools and distributing the money unfairly, the state Supreme Court said Thursday.
The justices gave the Legislature 13 months to develop an adequate school funding formula. The state now spends $1.7 billion a year on education, with its 310 school districts adding more funds.
Public school students are entitled to a ''general, suitable and efficient'' education system, and the state has failed to provide one, the justices said in a case that, in various forms, goes back decades.
Gov. Mike Huckabee said the ruling would require a ''total revamping'' of the education funding system.
''We've got our work cut out for us,'' he said.
The justices upheld a lower court's ruling that the school funding system violates the equal protection clause of the state constitution.
The court did not order specific changes. Some experts have said Arkansas would have to spend up to $1 billion more a year to fulfill suggestions laid down by Pulaski County judge Collins Kilgore in May 2001.
The court upheld much of what Kilgore ordered but said he went too far in ordering the creation of preschool programs.
''We do not agree ... that the courts of this state can mandate preschool education as an essential component of an adequate education,'' the justices wrote. ''That is for the General Assembly and the school districts to decide.''
The Arkansas Legislature opens its next session Jan. 13. The justices said it would give lawmakers until Jan. 1, 2004, to provide more money for education and find a better way to distribute the funds to districts.
The decision Thursday was the third time in the last 20 years that the state's school funding formula was declared unconstitutional. Experts had said it could take between $400 million and $1 billion in new money annually to meet Kilgore's mandate - the bulk of which was upheld by the higher court.
''It's obvious the court wants this case to end,'' said Jim Pitcock, a spokesman for Attorney General Mark Pryor. ''It looks like the end is in sight and the general assembly has some work to do.''
Plaintiffs' attorneys said they had not read the ruling and couldn't comment.
Last year, Kilgore ruled the state had done little to address basic inequities since the state Supreme Court declared the system unconstitutional in 1983.
Following that 1983 decision, then-Gov. Bill Clinton formed a commission that made recommendations the Legislature later adopted as Arkansas' first statewide education standards. The Legislature also increased the state sales tax, and Clinton made basic teacher testing a condition for teacher raises.
But the Lake View School District filed suit in 1992, contending the funding system still allowed wide disparities between wealthy and poor school districts.
Kilgore's predecessor, now a state Supreme Court justice, declared the system inadequate in 1994 and gave the state two years to narrow the gap.
The funding system was changed, and voters in 1996 approved a statewide standard for operating and maintaining schools. But the court held that even those steps hadn't solved the inequity.
AP-NY-11-21-02 1202EST
Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. |
