Legal Challenge Points to School Funding Inequities

Lawyers say that large inequities remain in the amount of money given to various California school districts, despite school formulas aimed at closing the gap.

More than a decade of financing reforms have failed to give children in poorer areas the same quality of education as students in wealthier neighborhoods, says a brief filed with the state Supreme Court by the East Palo Alto Community Law Project.

The law center filed the brief Friday on behalf of the Ravenswood City School District, a largely minority district in San Mateo County. The court is to consider the brief and other arguments at a hearing April 9.

The brief said Ravenswood received the equivalent of nearly $1,300 per student less than the predominantly white Las Lomitas district in Atherton. As a result, the document said, Las Lomitas receives $5 million more per year than Ravenswood, even though Ravenswood has more students.

Charlie Mae Knight, school superintendent in Ravenswood, said the difference means that Las Lomitas gets better-trained teachers and less-crowded classrooms.

“These aren’t frills or fancy new programs,” Knight said. “They’re basic to the kind of education all Californians expect their children to receive.”

Law center attorney David Neely said Ravenswood “is a district in desperate need. These students are the costliest to educate and are given the least amount of money.”

The brief was the latest action in a string of challenges to a 1983 ruling that found the state in compliance with the provisions of the 19-year-old Serrano vs. Priest case, which shifted school funding in California from local to state control. A 1974 ruling in that case required the state to limit funding differences between school districts in the same county to $100 per student.