Alabama School Financing Not Equitable, Judge Rules

A judge set the stage for an overhaul of the way Alabama funds its public schools, ruling the state has failed to provide an “equitable and adequate” education for all children.

“The quality of educational opportunities available to a child in the public schools of Alabama depends upon the fortuitous circumstance of where that child happens to reside and attend school,” Circuit Judge Eugene Reese said last week.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Alabama Coalition for Equity, a group of 29 school systems in poor districts, and others representing a range of schoolchildren and parents.

Alabama currently allocates money to each school system based on enrollment. Local school systems may supplement the funding with property tax dollars.

Reese said the state’s schoolchildren have a constitutional right to an educational system that provides them with “substantially equitable and adequate educational opportunities.”

The judge didn’t spell out how the state should fund the public school system to bring it into compliance, nor did he set a deadline. A hearing was scheduled for June 9.

Gov. Guy Hunt, named as the defendant, had no immediate comment, said spokesman Donny Claxton.

In the last four years, courts in several states, including Kentucky, Montana, Texas and New Jersey, have declared their public educational systems unconstitutional and ordered that spending between affluent and poor districts be equalized.

On Feb. 16, the Texas Legislature approved a constitutional amendment that would transfer local property tax money from rich districts to poorer ones.

The share-the-wealth measure goes to voters in a May 1 referendum.

In the Alabama case, Hunt had argued that dollars alone won’t solve the problems in the state’s 450,000-student school system. He also maintained that the lawsuit was an effort to impose a $1-billion tax increase.

Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Bo Torbert, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said nothing in the ruling should require additional tax dollars.

State Superintendent of Education Wayne Teague said he couldn’t estimate what the judge’s order would cost the state.