Opinion ID: 2509859
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Local Systems' Incomplete Restrictive Meaning and the Majority's Illogical Restrictive Meanings

Text: Whatever special schools means in the 1983 Constitution, no one has argued that it is narrower than the three examples that were listed in the 1966 Amendment and 1976 Constitution and then deleted in 1983vocational trade schools, schools for exceptional children, and schools for adult education. [18] Schools for exceptional students and (perhaps) schools for adult education may serve students with special educational needs. The problem for the local systems special needs interpretation is that vocational trade schools are defined not by a type of student but rather by the curriculum or type of subjects taught-training for the skilled trades instead of, for example, preparation for college. See OCGA § 20-2-152(a) (not including adult students or vocational students in the listing of the types of students with special education needs). Yet vocational trade schools undeniably are special schools; indeed, the phrase special schools in our Constitution traces back not to a focus on students with special needs like the deaf and blind, but to the ability to create area schools, including vocational trade schools, beyond the bounds and authority of individual local districts. See Division I(E) above. Perhaps recognizing this serious shortcoming of their interpretation, the local systems conspicuously avoid discussing vocational trade schools in their arguments. But at least the local systems are respectful of the English language; the majority, searching for a way around this problem, is not. In theory, the word special, as used to modify schools, could have the limited meaning special student body. Or it could have the limited meaning special curriculum. But students and curricula are two very different thingsand they are only two of the many characteristics that could make a school special. A single adjective used in a single phrase does not normally have two (but only two) limited and different meanings. Instead, writers trying to convey such dual and limited meanings would be expected to use the additional modifiers the majority inserts into our Constitution today. Trying to gloss over this defect, several portions of the majority opinion elide the two distinct meanings, indicating that a special school must have both a distinctive student body and a distinctive curriculum. See Maj. Op. at 777, 779. But that approach runs into the same problem as the local systems' approach. A school for exceptional students (like the disabled or the gifted) might have unusual students, but teach the standard curriculum; a vocational trade school might have an unusual curriculum, but ordinary students. Both types of schools, however, are unquestionably described in our Constitution with the single adjective special. This single adjective must have one meaning and must encompass, at a minimum, the diverse types of schools that everyone agrees are special. There is such a definition schools are special if they are created by the General Assembly separate from the common schools established by the local school systems. The majority's position that what defines a special school is its unique students or curriculum, and that what entity creates the school is irrelevant, see Maj. Op. at 780-81, raises another problem too. Many large local school systems have established schools attended only by special needs students; moreover, a local school system could create, perhaps with approval from the State Board of Education or other local districts but without any action by the General Assembly, a local school that is as unique in its student body or the subjects it teaches as any school that could ever be created by the General Assembly or the Charter Schools Commission. Under our Constitution, what would such a school be called? Under the majority's interpretation, the school's unique student body and curriculum would make it a special school. But our Constitution expressly authorizes only the General Assembly to create a special school. In my view, a local school for special students is simply another local school, because a special school is defined not by its student body or the subjects it teaches, but by its creation by the General Assembly outside of the common county school system. My view, unlike the majority's, is consistent with the ordinary meaning of the words used in our Constitution.