The Arkansas Legislature didn't violate the constitutional rights of a Newton County school district that claimed it was underfunded, a Pulaski County Circuit Court judge ruled Wednesday.
Judge Chris Piazza issued a memorandum opinion Wednesday regarding a 5-year-old lawsuit brought by the 355-student Deer/Mount Judea School District and instructed both parties to draft a final order for his approval.
The towns of Deer and Mount Judea are 22 miles apart in an area just south of the Buffalo National River. The school district, which is in the Ozark Mountains, maintains campuses in both towns.
The Newton County school district, nearing financial distress, complained in the suit that the Arkansas Legislature began to shirk its obligations almost from the moment the state Supreme Court withdrew its oversight of education financing in 2007 by ruling that the school-financing system met the constitutional standard.
That decision ended almost 15 years of litigation over the issue, commonly referred to as the Lake View rulings, named for the now-defunct rural school district that was the first to sue over inequitable education funding.
In a nonjury trial in February, attorneys for the Deer/Mount Judea School District argued that Arkansas lawmakers have routinely ignored their duty to the state's schoolchildren by disregarding financing laws that are supposed to guarantee every student gets a constitutionally mandated chance at an adequate education.
In his conclusion Wednesday, Piazza wrote, "While the case brought by the Deer/Mt. Judea School District is a shot across the bow, it certainly does not rise to a constitutional [deprivation] that would require judicial intervention in the General Assembly's duty to ensure that all of Arkansas' children receive a substantially equal education."
In the February trial, school district attorney Clay Fendley told the judge that the Deer/Mount Judea district has been exceptionally hard-hit by the Legislature's failure to do right financially by the public schools system.
State funding is so poor that the district's best-paid teacher still makes less than a first-year teacher at the state's most affluent district in Springdale, he said. There is no overlap between the salary schedules of the two districts, Fendley said.
In Piazza's ruling, he cited a University of Arkansas study indicating "the per pupil general administration costs [in the Deer/Mount Judea school district] was $714, which was 108 percent higher than the comparison group average."
The district could save money by consolidating teacher positions that are duplicated on the two campuses, he wrote.
The superintendent's salary in the Deer/Mount Judea district was 95 percent higher than the comparison group, and per-student funding for maintenance and operation costs was 32 percent higher than average, according to the ruling.
"Deer/Mount Judea is already receiving one of the highest funded special needs isolated funding and has not shown evidence of how or why the current funding is not sufficient to provide an adequate education," Piazza wrote. "Therefore, this issue does not create a constitutional infringement."
State transportation funding for Deer/Mount Judea is so low that the district has to divert education money to help pay for its busing and transportation costs, Fendley told the judge in February.
With student bus rides averaging 49 minutes statewide, some Deer/Mount Judea students can spend 167 minutes -- almost three hours -- just getting to school, he said. There are studies that show spending too much time traveling to and from school can affect a student's physical and emotional well-being as well as their academic performance, he said.
Lawyers for the school district argued that was a violation of the Arkansas Constitution's requirements of a "general, suitable, and efficient system of free public schools."
In his opinion Wednesday, Piazza wrote that "the constitution is silent as to transportation time to schools."
"This court cannot assume law that is not there ..." wrote Piazza. "Therefore, this court cannot state that transportation time violates the constitution."
While the school district spent an average of $3,800 less than 14 comparable districts on average annual classroom teacher salaries, the Deer/Mount Judea district had an average of 3.75 fewer students per teacher, and state funding is based on a per-pupil formula, according to the ruling.
"Average teacher salary in Deer/Mt. Judea was 118 percent of the median household income, which was 9 percentage points higher than the index of the district comparison group ..." wrote Piazza. "Therefore, although there is some variation, the result does not equate to unconstitutional."
The case likely will be appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which has twice considered ancillary issues in the suit, filed in December 2010.
In a letter accompanying his opinion Wednesday, Piazza asked both parties to prepare an agreed-upon order and submit it to the court for review.
"If the parties are unable to agree to the form of an order, each party may submit their own version of a precedent and I will choose a version to sign," he wrote.
Metro on 05/12/2016