Opinion ID: 1148513
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: rich and poor

Text: The impact of today's decision will require transferring school funding resources from the rich districts to the poor districts  there being little effect on the many districts which are neither rich nor poor. In our urban-suburban complexes where most students live, a rich district does not mean a district of rich people but is ordinarily one of poor residents, while a poor district is ordinarily one of more fortunate people. The impact of today's opinion appears to be a transfer of resources from poor people to those more fortunate. The determination whether a district is rich or poor depends upon its assessed valuation per student. Thus, the presence of large tracts of property not occupied by children attending local public schools tends to make a district rich. Absence of such property tends to make a district poor. Bearing this in mind, we can in general identify the so-called rich and poor districts. Rich districts will include extensive commercial or industrial property or both, while the poorer ones will possess little of such property, either having zoned it out or having not attracted it. Rich districts will possess a low ratio of public school students to the total population  poor ones a high ratio. With these considerations, we can further identify the rich and poor districts. Although exceptions exist, [10] rich districts comprise the older commercial-industrial areas. Because of the transition of relatively affluent families to the suburbs to raise families, the parents in rich districts tend to be poorer than the average. [11] The poor districts on the other hand are those having substantial new housing subdivisions but lacking commercial-industrial bases. They have a high ratio of students to total population. Parents who can afford to purchase new homes to raise their families are ordinarily more affluent than those residing in the older commercial-industrial areas. This analysis of poor and rich districts is confirmed by numerous studies (see Zelinsky, Educational Equalization and Suburban Sprawl: Subsidizing The Suburbs Through School Finance Reform (1976) 71 Nw.U.L.Rev. 161, 162, 182-184, and authorities collected) and by my study of the poor and rich districts in the 1973-1974 school year. (Table IV-11, pp. 93-123.) Further, the trial record discloses a number of illustrations where the mature industrial-commercial community has a much higher assessed valuation per pupil than the nearby new suburban area (in some cases more than double). But the latter has a much higher per capita income than the former (again sometimes a two-to-one relationship). The rich districts being primarily poor people districts, and the poor ones composed of people more fortunate economically, I cannot believe that equal protection requires us to take from the poor to give to the more fortunate.