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Not everyone happy with Lake View decision Sunday, Jun 3, 2007 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - One of the many state legislators expressing happiness and relief after the state Supreme Court declared Arkansas' system of public school financing constitutional asked if anyone was disappointed in the news. "Has anyone said they're not glad to see its over?" Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, asked last week in the wake of the high court decision that ended the long-running Lake View school funding case. Gov. Mike Beebe had described the decision Thursday as "historic" and Rep. Chris Thyer, D-Jonesboro, admitted candidly, "I know that it sounds like a teenage girl or something, but ... I'm giddy with excitement" that lawmakers took decisive enough action this year to bring the 15-year-old case to an end. Even David Matthews, attorney for the Rogers School District and the lead lawyer in the case, said he was pleased and praised the governor and Legislature for their efforts this year: A $121 million increase in state aid to school districts and $456 million dedicated to overhauling school buildings and equipment. But with everything that the state has done to improve education in the state since the tiny Lake View School District in eastern Arkansas first challenged the school funding system in 1992, not everyone is satisfied that the original demands for equity in the distribution of education funding have been met. Martin W. Schoppmeyer Sr., professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas and a key witness for the plaintiffs when the case first went to trial in 1994 in Pulaski County Chancery Court, said Friday the state's poor school districts and poor children are still hurting. "I talked to Jimmie Wilson, who was the chief lawyer in the original case, sometime back and Jimmie and I agreed that at this stage of the game we really should write a letter of apology to the children of Arkansas, especially the black children and the citizens of Arkansas who now ... support a highly unfair ... inequitable system of education which is dooming thousands of children to second rate treatment," said Schoppmeyer. "We should apologize for attempting to get that equity," he added. Wilson, a former state representative from Lexa, and former state Sen. Bill Lewellen of Marianna headed the Lake View legal team that filed the original school funding lawsuit. Neither returned calls seeking comment Friday. Since the lawsuit was filed, the Legislature has pumped hundred of millions of new state dollars into public schools, approved sweeping changes in academic and accountability standards and merged scores of small rural schools. Schoppmeyer still sees problems. The former UA professor of educational administration who taught school finance for 40 years, said he is writing an article for the Journal of Education Finance, which is published by University of Illinois Press, expressing his thoughts on the Supreme Court's decision. Despite state efforts in recent years, Schoppmeyer said he believes the richer school districts will continue to get richer and poor districts will continue to struggle because of Amendment 74, approved by voters in 1996. The amendment set a statewide uniform property tax rate of 25 mills for maintenance and operation of local school districts. It also allows increases to enhance local schools. "Equity was killed in 1996 with the adoption of Amendment 74, which guarantees inequity in school finance funding because it permits districts to charge whatever millage they can get their voters to approve," he said. "Consequently, a district that is wealthy with tax base can spend far more money." Because of Amendment 74, more wealthy school districts are able to recruit better teachers because they can pay them better starting salaries, he said. Tristan Greene, a former long-time assistant to the state Department of Education on the Lake View case, said Friday that Schoppmeyer is correct that Amendment 74 "changed the rules," but he said the change has been upheld by the state Supreme Court. "The populace of this state voted in Amendment 74 in 1996 with 57 percent of the vote ... to allow a district to go beyond adequate, and the Supreme Court has admitted that," Greene said. "So if a school district, say Benton, Bryant, Bentonville, Little Rock, Paragould, El Dorado, whomever, wants to go a little bit further by taxing themselves more they can do it." As for unequal entry-level teacher pay around the state, Greene said the Legislature during the recently completed session raised the entry-level teacher salary to $28,897. "If you look into the detail, you will notice that Rogers School District has a high starting salary for a bachelor degree and no years of experience, but their step each year are a lot smaller than, say, Fayetteville or Little Rock. They try to get teachers in on the front end and they rarely hold onto them," Greene said. "Is teacher salary a problem in the state? I would say yes, but the test the Supreme Court laid out in 2004 was not how much teachers were paid but whether or not there were adequate teachers for every student," he said. "No one has shown the court that because teachers salaries are lower in the Delta, that teachers are worse in the Delta." Schoppmeyer also criticized the passage of Act 60 of 2003, which mandated administrative consolidation of school districts whose average enrollment in each of the two previous school years was under 350. The measure immediately forced 57 school districts to merge with larger districts and, along with greater authority given the state Department of Education to address school academic and fiscal problems, has reduced the number of school districts from 311 in the late 1990s to the current 245. Among the small districts forced to consolidate was the Lake View district. "The district may not be there, but the people are still there," Greene said. "To say (the Lake View) case was districts is to say this case is about employment," he said. "It misses the point, which is we're trying to get a better education for kids. Not how many districts are there, not how many school boards there are or how many teachers there are. It is the best education possible for students." After a series of hearings and another trial in circuit court, the Supreme Court in 2002 declared Arkansas' public school funding system unconstitutionally inequitable and inadequate. In 2004 and again in 2005, the state Supreme Court appointed two former state Supreme Court justices to oversee progress the state was making in complying with an order to provide equal educational opportunities for all of Arkansas' 450 public school students. The Legislature increased school funding by $400 million in 2004 and added another $132 million in a 2006 special session. Last year, the court asked the special to assess legislation approved during the special session. The order came at the request of the Rogers, Barton-Lexa, Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts, which had argued that while the Legislature in 2006 did increase school funding, it had not adequately addressed need school building repairs, programs for non-English speaking students and funding for rapidly growing school district. This year, the Legislature increased minimum state aide to public schools by $121 million and allocated $456 million, nearly half of a $919 million budget surplus, to overhauling crumbling school buildings and equipment statewide. In the high court's unanimous decision Thursday, the justices said the "General Assembly has now taken the required and necessary legislative steps to assure that the school children of this state are provided an adequate education and a substantially equal educational opportunity." ------- Reporter John Lyon contributed to this report |
