The lawsuit won't be filed until the state's 84 property-rich districts have voted on whether to join. We have to educate all our children, not just the children of the wealthy. In the state's struggling pockets, memories of the fight for equal funding are fresh. Underprivileged districts sued Texas in 1984 for sending poor students to inferior schools, setting off the wrenching, decade-long legal battle that ended in Robin Hood. Runn Elementary, a rundown sprinkling of battered buildings and trailers, depends on Texas handouts.
Students live with their families in abandoned school buses and, in one case, an old horse trailer.
The school has neither covered walkways nor a gymnasium, and two kindergarten classes are sometimes crammed into one room. Every child at Runn eats free lunch. Administrators at the wealthier schools are sympathetic. They don't want the poor districts to suffer, they say, but the state should carve the money out of its budget instead of forcing wealthy areas to care for their underprivileged counterparts. That's up to them.