Full Court Press: Florida’s Education Lawsuits

(re-posted here courtesy of Folio Weekly)

     Eunice Barnum thinks Florida is failing students and violating the state constitution in the process. The Jacksonville grandmother, along with seven named co-plaintiffs, filed suit on Nov. 18 alleging that by failing to adequately fund a high-quality public education for all students, the legislature and several state officials are flouting constitutional law.
     Barnum, a longtime community activist and president of the Sherwood Forest Community Association, joined the lawsuit because she's worried about the future of two of her wards, who are in kindergarten and second grade. Having seen the effects of poor education span the generations, particularly in the African-American community, Barnum says she felt compelled to act. "I've seen children who do not make it, who are not eligible for employment, standing idle on street corners, in jail -- you name it." Barnum isn't alone. The lawsuit, filed in Leon County Circuit Court by the Gainesville public interest law firm Southern Legal Counsel, Inc., is one of two such cases brought within two weeks of each other. The first suit was filed on Nov. 4 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five families in Palm Beach County.
     Both suits seek declaratory relief: The plaintiffs want the courts to declare that the legislature and other state officials have failed to execute their "paramount duty" to "adequately fund" a "high quality education" for all Florida students, as specified by a 1998 voter-approved constitutional amendment, and to order state officials to carry out their constitutional duty to do just that.
     The Palm Beach suit is also seeking class-action status for the affected students, paving the way for future class-action lawsuits. Such suits would likely focus on how Florida¹s education inadequacies disproportionately affect Hispanic and African-American students, and the ACLU case offers stark evidence of this. African-American students in Palm Beach County graduate at a rate significantly below their white counterparts -- either 19 percent less often or 29 percent less often, depending on how the figures are calculated. Hispanic students graduate almost 10 percent less often than whites. Class-action status would allow current and former students an opportunity to sue for damages.
     The Leon County suit doesn't seek damages; rather, it seeks a declaration that the claims are true, coupled with an order for corrective action. These court orders may have limited value, notes Duval County School Board Chairman Brenda Priestly Jackson, who observes that the landmark Brown vs.Board of Education case declared segregation illegal, but didn't offer an immediate remedy.
     "You can get a judgment," says Priestly Jackson, who is also an attorney, "but [relief] is very limited." Jodi Seigel, attorney for Southern Legal Counsel, Inc., doesn't necessarily disagree. "It's up to the courts to make the declaration, but not to tell the legislature how to  it."                                                                                                                                                   State Sen. Steve Wise, who serves as chair of the Senate's Pre-K-12 Education Appropriations committee, expresses frustration over the lawsuits. He won't concede that the state underfunds education. He says he would give more money to public schools if he could, but cites the current economic crisis as a constraint on additional funding. "Let them come sit with us -- we'll print dollars," he chides the plaintiffs. Wise adds that the legislature has "fulfilled it [constitutional law] the best they can with the dollars given." But funding gaps didn't suddenly develop when the market crashed, and Wise, who's served in the legislature since 1988 and chaired education appropriation committees in the House and Senate since 1999, has had a hand in most public education budgets for the past two decades.
"Adequate funding is in the eye of the beholder," Wise says.

Perceptions that the state is trying to finance schools on the cheap is increasingly widespread, however. Even the Florida Board of Education doesn't believe the budget passes constitutional muster. A transcript of a Board of Education meeting, dated Sept. 15, 2009, shows that four of the six members present agreed the budget didn't fulfill the state's constitutional mandate to adequately fund public schools.
     While Priestly Jackson understands the fiscal difficulties Florida faces because of the recession, she says that funding education is a matter of the state's priorities. Despite having the "most progressive [constitutional] language of any state" in terms of prioritizing public education, she says, Florida also has "the most creative ways to siphon off money for education" through tax loopholes.
     Ironically, the children on whose behalf Barnum is suing attend a school that has climbed through the state's grading system from an "F" all the way to an "A." Rutledge Pearson Elementary School has also attained progress goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for two consecutive years.
Barnum contends, however, that while the school has made improvements, not all of its students are performing well, which can lead to adverse long-term effects.
"When 13- and 14-year-old children can¹t do basic math, can't read a basic preschool book, and keep getting passed on..." Barnum says, "the worst kind of abuse is when you don't educate a child." School shouldn't be a "pipeline to prison," Barnum told Folio Weekly.
     "That's just straight-up egregious."

Tags: ACLU, Education Funding, education lawsuits, Sen. Steve Wise

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 8:18 PM and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.