Kentucky Supreme Court Orders New School System

The state Supreme Court declared Kentucky’s system of public schooling unconstitutional Thursday and ordered the Legislature to create a new system.

By permitting a wide gap between poor and wealthier school districts, the Legislature failed to meet its constitutional duty, the court ruled.

“Lest there be any doubt, the result of our decision is that Kentucky’s entire system of common schools is unconstitutional,” Chief Justice Robert Stephens wrote for the court’s five-member majority.

Rich and poor alike “must be given the same opportunity and access to an adequate education,” the court ruled in a case brought four years ago by a coalition of 66 “property poor” districts.

Applies to All School Laws

The decision “applies to the entire sweep of the system--all its parts and parcels,” including laws and regulations “creating, implementing and financing the system,” the opinion said.

This includes laws creating local school districts and school boards, the state Education Department, school construction and maintenance, teacher certification--”the whole gamut of the common school system in Kentucky,” the opinion said.

Gov. Wallace Wilkinson, a critic of the state’s school management scheme, said the court had given Kentucky its greatest opportunity of the last century.

“We’ve been talking about changing the management culture within the system,” Wilkinson said. “We never imagined that we’d have an opportunity to remake the entire system.”

State schools Supt. John Brock called it “the happiest day of my professional life.”

The General Assembly’s ranking members--Senate President Pro Tem John Rose and House Speaker Don Blandford--said that building the kind of educational system the court required was sure to the expensive, but that they are willing.

Rose and Blandford also said the ruling was a relief, although they technically were on the losing side. “As far as I’m concerned, there are no more sacred cows” in education, Blandford said.

The court agreed with plaintiff districts that, despite existing programs to funnel state money to local districts, “there are wide variations in financial resources . . . which result in unequal educational opportunities throughout Kentucky,” Stephens’ opinion said.

“Even a total elimination of all mismanagement and waste in local school districts would not correct the situation as it now exists,” the opinion said.

The Constitution “places an absolute duty on the General Assembly to re-create, re-establish a new system of common schools,” the ruling said, likening the present system to “a crumbling school-house, which must be redesigned and revitalized for efficient use.”

The Legislature must provide for adequate funding of schools and can choose its own method, the court said. But, if lawmakers decide to continue basing the system on poverty taxes, they must ensure full valuation of property and uniformity of tax rates, it said.

Kentucky law always has required full valuation of property. Local school boards, which now number 177, have been allowed to set their own tax rates, however, and they have varied widely.

Spending per pupil in 1987-88 ranged from a high of $4,094 in Anchorage, an affluent suburb of Louisville, to a low of $1,986 in Williamsburg, a small Appalachian town in southeastern Kentucky, state Education Department figures indicate.