Opinion ID: 2633306
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The District Court Failed to Define the Components of a Safe Environment Conducive to Learning.

Text: It is elemental that one must know what the standard is before one can determine whether or not it has been met. The principal flaw with the district court's ruling is the lack of clear standards for determining whether the objectives set forth in ISEEO I and ISEEO III have been met. These decisions provided the following analytical framework to guide the inquiry: (1) whether the Legislature has provided the means to fund facilities that provide a safe environment that is conducive to learning, ISEEO III, 132 Idaho at 566, 976 P.2d at 921, which depends on (2) whether school districts can meet the standards established by the Board of Education with the money made available under the funding system. ISEEO I, 123 Idaho at 584, 850 P.2d at 735. The problem is that the district court did not put any flesh on the bones of the safe environment conducive to learning nomenclature. Before any court can determine whether the Legislature has fulfilled its obligation to provide adequate funding sources to achieve the objectives, it is necessary to identify what attributes a facility must have in order to provide a safe environment conducive to learning. The Legislature and State Board of Education have defined a safe environment conducive to learning, insofar as the phrase concerns facilities, as one that meets applicable building and safety codes, made applicable to the schools for the first time in 2000. Nevertheless, safe environment conducive to learning derives from the thoroughness requirement in the Idaho Constitution. Whether school districts are providing schools that are safe and which provide an environment that is conducive to learning is primarily a question of constitutional interpretation for this Court to answer. ISEEO I, 123 Idaho at 583, 850 P.2d at 734; Osmunson v. State, 135 Idaho 292, 294, 17 P.3d 236, 238 (2000). However, this Court is not an expert with regard to the question of what environmental conditions must exist in order for children to learn. The Court has set the objective  a safe environment conducive to learning  and has set the analytical framework, but has left it up to the parties to provide the evidence, which necessarily includes evidence from expert sources as to what components are necessary in order to achieve the objective. At a minimum, one would have expected the parties to have presented expert evidence as to what components were necessary to achieve a safe environment for students that was conducive to learning, whether or not such an environment existed throughout the educational system, and whether existing funding systems, including those enacted in 2000, were sufficient to remedy any deficiencies. It does not appear to me that evidence exists in the record to answer these questions and, therefore, it is difficult to support the district court's ruling. The State's response to ISEEO III has been to focus on the physical safety of school facilities. Idaho Code § 33-1613 provides the Legislature's definition of safe environment conducive to learning: [t]he aspects of a safe environment conducive to learning as provided by section 33-1612, Idaho Code, that pertain to the physical plant used to provide a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools are hereby defined as those necessary to comply with the safety and health requirements set forth in this section.