Opinion ID: 2750299
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Degree of Control Maintained by the State

Text: The second factor examines where Georgia vests control over school districts. Under Georgia law, school districts are subject to “the control and management” of county boards of education, which have the authority to “establish and maintain public schools within their limits” and make “rules to govern the county schools of their county.” Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-50, -59; Ga. Const. art. VIII, § V, ¶ I; see also Thornton v. Clarke Cnty. Sch. Dist., 514 S.E.2d 11, 13 (Ga. 14 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 15 of 33 1999) (“A local school board has broad discretion to control the operation of the school system . . . .”). County school board members are locally elected county residents. See Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-51 (“No person shall be eligible for election as a member of a local board of education who is not a resident of the school district in which that person seeks election and of the election district which such person seeks to represent.”). As a result, Georgia school districts are largely under local control. Indeed, as explained by the Georgia Supreme Court, Georgia’s Constitution “embodies the fundamental principle of exclusive local control of general primary and secondary (‘K–12’) public education.” Gwinnett Cnty. Sch. Dist. v. Cox, 710 S.E.2d 773, 775 (Ga. 2011). The constitution “limit[s] governmental authority over the public education of Georgia’s children to that level of government closest and most responsive to the taxpayers and parents of the children being educated.” Id. at 776. In addition to being locally operated and controlled, Georgia’s school districts and school boards have substantial autonomy over their affairs. School districts may sue and be sued. Foster v. Cobb Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 213 S.E.2d 38, 39 (Ga. Ct. App. 1975). School boards may purchase property, borrow money, enter contracts, and issue bonds. See Ga. Code Ann. §§ 20-2-520, -390, -500, - 15 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 16 of 33 430.8 Similar powers were considered evidence of autonomy in Mt. Healthy, 429 U.S. at 280–81, 97 S. Ct. at 573 (school board could issue bonds and levy taxes within certain state law restrictions), and Stewart, 908 F.2d at 1510–11 (school board could issue tax anticipation warrants, borrow funds, and establish education policy). See also Moore v. Tangipahoa Parish Sch. Bd., 594 F.2d 489, 493–94 (5th Cir. 1979) (school board with power to sue and be sued, contract, purchase and sell property, borrow funds, and levy taxes deemed autonomous political subdivision). The School District argues that Georgia nonetheless exercises significant control over school districts by setting rules and regulations for school boards and establishing statewide education policies. The School District notes, for example, that the State establishes the qualifications and duties of school board members, the manner in which they are elected, their terms of office, and the basic procedures for their meetings. See Ga. Code Ann. §§ 20-2-49, -51, -52, -57–58. The State also gives the Governor authority to suspend board members if a school becomes at risk of losing its accreditation. Id. § 20-2-73. 8 Specifically, Georgia’s Code authorizes school boards to, inter alia, “purchase, lease, or rent school sites” and other school property, Ga. Code Ann. § 20-5-520; “borrow sufficient amounts of money . . . to pay for the operation of the public schools,” id. § 20-2-390; enter “contracts for . . . supplies, materials, equipment, or agricultural products,” id. § 20-2-500; and “incur any bonded debt for building, equipping, or purchasing sites for . . . schoolhouses,” id. § 20-2-430. 16 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 17 of 33 Moreover, the School District contends, Georgia has exercised increasing control over education policy since the enactment of the Quality Basic Education Act (“QBE”) in 1985. The QBE’s stated purposes include: Providing an equitable public education finance structure which ensures that every student has an opportunity for a quality basic education, regardless of where the student lives, . . . [e]stablishing . . . state-wide standards which ensure that each student has access to a quality program[,] . . . [and] [p]roviding an evaluation process for all school system personnel to assure the public that personnel are performing at acceptable levels . . . . Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-131. The QBE sets forth a framework for funding basic education in Georgia’s public schools. Specific provisions of the QBE also establish minimum salaries for teachers, standards for teacher certification, graduation requirements, and a statewide core curriculum. See Ga. Code Ann. §§ 20-2-140, -142, -200, -212.9 The QBE further requires school districts to submit their budgets to the State Board of Education (“State Board”), which “either accept[s] or reject[s]” the budgets. Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-167. School districts must spend at least sixty-five percent of their total operating expenditures on items “directly associated with the interaction between teachers and students,” such as teacher salaries, school supplies, and classroom activities. Id. § 20-2-171. The State’s Office of Planning 9 See also Chris Grant, Education Reform, New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia .org/ articles/education/education-reform#The-Quality-BasicEducation-Act (last updated Oct. 8, 2014). 17 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 18 of 33 and Budget is authorized to “verify the proper expenditure of funds” by school districts. Id. § 20-2-68. Finally, the State Board may withhold state funds from any school district that fails to comply with the QBE. Id. § 20-2-243. The School District contends that these and similar regulations demonstrate the State’s “immense control” over Georgia’s school districts. The School District further argues that in addition to exercising general control, the State controls the particular functions at issue here: the evaluation, discipline, and termination of teachers. The School District notes that Georgia requires teachers to be evaluated on an annual basis using an “evaluation system as adopted and defined by the State Board of Education.” Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-210. The evaluation must be based on several criteria, including growth in student achievement and observations of the teacher’s classroom, id., and a teacher who receives an “unsatisfactory” evaluation must be placed on a PDP. [Appellee’s Br. 27 n.7]. The State also regulates the termination of teachers by specifying only eight statutory bases for terminating or not renewing a teacher’s contract. A school board’s termination decision may be appealed to the State Board. Ga. Code Ann. §§ 20-2-940, -942, - 1160. The School District correctly asserts that Georgia has enacted many laws pertaining to the operation of school districts. However, these laws do not 18 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 19 of 33 establish the requisite control for Eleventh Amendment purposes. As an initial matter, many of Georgia’s laws prescribe minimum requirements that school districts may exceed. For example, while a school district must base its curriculum on the “uniformly sequenced core curriculum” established by the State Board, it may “sequence, expand, and enrich this curriculum to the extent it deems necessary and appropriate for its students and communities.” Ga. Code Ann. § 20- 2-140. Similarly, the State prescribes only minimum salaries for teachers, and provides that “[l]ocal units of administration may supplement the salaries of personnel subject to the schedule of minimum salaries.” Id. § 20-2-212. Establishing minimum requirements is not sufficient to demonstrate control. See Savage, 343 F.3d at 1045 (“[I]f prescribing minimum standards were the measure of a ‘central government function,’ then school districts would doubtless be considered an arm of the federal government, as well, by virtue of such statutes as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 . . . .”). Furthermore, other courts have found regulations similar to Georgia’s insufficient to establish state control over a school district. In Savage, the court described the many aspects of public education controlled by Arizona’s state board: [T]he state board sets uniform statewide courses of study and competency requirements for promotion and graduation of students and controls certification of teachers, approves standardized tests, and prescribes criteria for determining students’ English proficiency. . . . 19 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 20 of 33 Arizona defines on a state-wide basis attendance requirements, circumstances when students may be expelled, and procedures for student discipline. Id. (internal citations omitted). Notwithstanding these regulations, the court concluded that the state did not exercise centralized government control over its school districts because the districts retained substantial autonomy. Id. at 1048; see also Duke v. Grady Mun. Schs., 127 F.3d 972, 979 (10th Cir. 1997) (finding that school board had local control even though New Mexico’s laws empowered the state board to determine public school policy and exercise general authority over schools, including the authority to establish standards regarding curriculum, teacher accreditation and qualifications, and graduation requirements). Moreover, while state approval of an entity’s budget may sometimes “evidence[] state control,” Williams v. District Board of Trustees of Edison Community College, Florida, 421 F.3d 1190, 1194 (11th Cir. 2005), it does not do so here because Georgia’s school districts exercise considerable autonomy over local fundraising, as discussed under the third factor. See Stewart, 908 F.2d at 1510–11 (finding that Alabama school board with substantial financial autonomy was not an “arm of the state,” even though it was required to submit its budget to the state superintendent for approval). The School District also overstates Georgia’s control over the evaluation and discipline of teachers. Although the State Board’s evaluation system provides 20 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 21 of 33 detailed guidelines for the teacher evaluation process, it appears that many of these guidelines only establish minimum requirements, as evidenced by the fact that the School District itself utilizes its own addendum to the State’s evaluation form. [See Doc. 54-5 at 2] (“Henry County Schools Annual Teacher Evaluation Addendum”). Moreover, while the evaluation system identifies broad criteria for evaluation (e.g., whether the teacher “[p]rovides effective feedback . . . on student performances”10), the actual observation and assessment of teachers is performed by local officials. See Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-210 (“The superintendent of each local school system shall identify an appropriately trained evaluator . . . .”). In the event that a teacher “disagrees with the evaluation procedures or results,” but the dispute does not involve termination or reprimand, the teacher may raise the issue with the local superintendent, but the “[l]ocal decision[] [is] not appealable to the Georgia Board of Education.” 11 Additionally, the school board exercises broad discretion over the formal discipline of teachers. For example, a school superintendent may “write a letter of reprimand . . . for any valid reason.” Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-944. Similarly, while a teacher may only be terminated or non-renewed for eight statutory reasons, one of those reasons is “[a]ny other good and sufficient cause.” Id. § 20-2-940. This 10 Ga. Dep’t of Educ., CLASS Keys Process Guide: Georgia’s Teacher Evaluation System 53 (2011), http://www.gadoe.org/School-Improvement/Teacher-and-LeaderEffectiveness/Documents/CLASS-Leader Keys/CK Process Guide 3-23-2011.pdf 11 Ga. Dep’t of Educ., supra note 10, at 34. 21 Case: 13-14631 Date Filed: 11/10/2014 Page: 22 of 33 gives the school board significant discretion over its disciplinary decisions. Furthermore, its decisions are binding unless a party appeals to the State Board, and even then, the State Board’s review is not de novo. Indeed, “the state board . . . shall [not] consider any question in matters before the local board nor consider the matter de novo, and the review by the state board . . . shall be confined to the record.” Id. § 20-2-1160. The State Board must sustain the county board’s findings if there is “any evidence” to support them. See Moulder v. Bartow Cnty. Bd. of Educ., 599 S.E.2d 495, 497 (Ga. Ct. App. 2004). Finally, one disciplinary action of which Lightfoot complains is her removal as cheerleading coach. The School District does not indicate how, if at all, this matter is regulated by the State. For these reasons, the second Manders factor also indicates that the School District is not an “arm of the State.”