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Future school funding challenges unlikely, Beebe says Saturday, Jun 2, 2007 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The state Supreme Court's unanimous decision declaring Arkansas' school funding system constitutional makes future legal challenges to the system unlikely, Gov. Mike Beebe said Friday. Beebe said he was not surprised by the decision Thursday in the long-running Lake View school funding case, but he was surprised the court ruled unanimously. "Certainly, when it is seven to nothing ... that sends a message that the strength of what's been done is such that it would be very difficult for anyone to challenge it," Beebe said on the monthly radio program "Ask the Governor" on the Arkansas Radio Network. Beebe said the court also sent a message by "going to the extra length" of issuing an opinion signed by all seven justices. "That, I think, emphasized the strength of their feelings on the issue," he said. Thursday's court ruling capped 15 years of litigation that began when the now-defunct Lake View School District filed a lawsuit over the state's school funding system, leading to a Supreme Court ruling that the funding of Arkansas' public schools was unconstitutionally inequitable and inadequate. The court said Thursday the General Assembly "has now taken the required and necessary legislative steps" to assure education opportunities across the state are equal and adequate. Beebe also was asked by a caller if his decision to increase spending on preschool programs by $40 million sends the message that preschoolers are "better served going into an institution such as education than being nurtured by their own parents." There is no substitute for parenting, but the reality is that "we have an inordinate number of children who start kindergarten and first grade behind," Beebe said. "And when they start behind, inevitably they stay behind, and inevitably there are social costs and other costs that you and I end up paying for." The state's pre-kindergarten programs target children living in poverty, who tend to start school behind other children, Beebe said. If some students start school without being ready, all students suffer because "the entire class has to slow down," he said. Asked if some of the $40 million would be spent on children of illegal immigrants, Beebe said that under federal law, children of illegal immigrants are not precluded from receiving an education. "I put my hand on that Bible and promised to uphold the constitution, and I'm going to do my dead level best to do that," he said. In answer to a question about the possibility of developing gasoline from agricultural waste, Beebe said he has been discussing the issue with research groups and "large investors," including one foreign investor. The cost to build a plant that can turn agricultural waste such as switchgrass and rice straw into oil which then can be refined to make gasoline may be between $300 million and $600 million, he said. Beebe predicted that production in Arkansas will begin within the next two years but said it will be longer before significant distribution begins. "One of the things that you've got to do is, you've got to make sure that the supply and demand stay in relative proximity to each other so that you don't drive the cost up or so that you don't cut the bottom of the market out from under a new developing area," he said. Beebe said he does not believe cellulose oil will replace crude oil, but if it can capture 5 percent to 20 percent of the market, or possibly more, "think of what that does to our dependence on foreign oil, and think of what that does in our economy." |
