Supreme Court Jars School Funding

Might a new Legislature stray from principles designed to make - and keep - the education oft ered to Arkansas schoolchildren both constitutionally adequate and equitable?

That’s a legitimate concern for school off cials, teachers and, of course, Arkansas parents.

Each successive Legislature is just a little more removed from the landmark 1983 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that the state’s public school system was unconstitutional because of the wealth-based funding that favored some children over others.

Last week, though, it was the Supreme Court that seemed to stray.

A four-person majority of the court appeared to ignore precedent the state’s high court set in litigation that didn’t end until 2007, when the court determined the schools were adequately funded.

Part of the solution was statewide passage of a constitutional amendment that requires patrons in each school district to levy no less than 25 mills of property tax for maintenance and operation of Arkansas’school system. Revenue from that “uniform rate of tax” is remitted to the state and redistributed to the state’s school districts.

The new ruling, issued last week, triggered concerns that the court had cracked open what had been settled law, making it all the more likely that lawmakers might tamper with the hard-won reforms.

School districts in Eureka Springs and Fountain Lake, whose 25-mill tax levies produced more revenue in a given year than school funding levels set by law, sued to keep the excess money.

The majority of the Supreme Court determined that the locally collected property tax couldn’t be considered state revenue and said the districts could keep the excess, while three other justices warned that such a decision would upend the state’s school-funding system.

“The majority nullifi es10 years of diff cult and painstaking work diligently undertaken by the General Assembly, the Department of Education, the attorney general, and the governor, to provide this state with a constitutional schoolfunding system,” Chief Justice Jim Hannah wrote in a strongly worded dissent.

“The state’s carefully crafted constitutional system of state-funded public education is obliterated by the majority’s decision.”

Reaction to the ruling from state offcials showed equal concern with its potential impact. Gov. Mike Beebe, a former state lawmaker during some of the Lake View litigation and the state’s attorney general during the most critical days of the crisis, said the Supreme Court got this ruling wrong.

The majority opened the door for future governors and legislatures to backtrack on the reforms, he said.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said last week he will ask the court to reconsider its ruling but that seldom happens. The justices knew full well what they were doing when they ruled as they did. They’re unlikely to entertain a rehearing.

Instead, this gamechanging decision will most likely be part and parcel of what was already going to be a challenging legislative session.

Few of today’s lawmakers and fewer still of those who will be in off ce next year were serving when the Legislature worked through the crisis triggered by litigation arising from a now defunct Lake View School District in Eastern Arkansas.

Importantly, back then the Supreme Court monitored both the executive and legislative branches of state government as they worked to respond to the Lake View ruling. That Supreme Court was eftectively in charge, the driving force that mandated compliance.

It was a painful process but resulted in reforms that have brought obvious improvement to the public schools, which are now by law the state’s top priority.

The makeup of the Supreme Court has changed since then. Unfortunately, the court’s commitment to an equitable and adequate education system seems to have changed, too.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.