Opinion ID: 3051186
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Changes in Fact

Text: [5] We begin with the moving parties’ attempt to make the first, fact-based showing — that the factual circumstances have so shifted as to sweep away the unappealed incremental funding determination. To succeed on this ground, given the original ruling, they were required to demonstrate either that there are no longer incremental costs associated with ELL programs in Arizona or that Arizona’s “base plus incremental costs” educational funding model was so altered that focusing on ELL-specific incremental costs funding has become irrelevant and inequitable. [6] Turning, then, to the first possibility, we cannot find that the district court clearly erred when it found, consistent with the basic premises of this litigation, that in 2007, as in 2000, “ELL students need extra help and that costs extra money.” Flores XI, 480 F. Supp. 2d at 1161. At the evidentiary hearing, all witnesses agreed that ELL students face unique challenges which require school districts to invest substantially in teacher training, materials, monitoring, and FLORES v. HORNE 1855 assessment efforts. If anything, after 2000, when Arizona moved away from bilingual education and required most courses to be taught in English, regardless of students’ language abilities, these challenges have become greater: A tenth grader, for example, who speaks no English but must pass a biology course taught entirely in English will require considerable assistance. The recent statewide program to improve ELL testing, monitoring, and support programs also imposes incremental costs on school districts. [7] Nor did the district court err when it determined that “the per-student incremental cost of providing ELL instruction is greater than either the current Group B weight” of about $340 per student or the roughly $450 per student that would be provided were HB 2064’s provision on Group B weights to be approved. Id. at 1162. As the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors observe, Superintendent Cooper’s management changes did ameliorate many of the specific examples of resource shortages that the district court identified in 2000. They did not, however, result in such success as to call into serious question NUSD’s need for increased incremental funds. NUSD’s own cost study, along with evidence from other districts throughout Arizona, placed estimated incremental costs at well over $1000 per student. The expert panels consulted in the NCSL study similarly recommended spending over $1000 per student, and, in some cases, recommended spending over $2000 per student. The NCSL’s school district survey reported actual per student spending as in the $600 range but cautioned that that figure might be an underestimate. The SjobergEvashnek study reported that actual expenditures in NUSD shortly after the Declaratory Judgment were in the $300 per student range but also noted that its estimate was likely low. Taken together, these studies provide very strong support for the proposition that the incremental costs of a compliant program not only exceed the Group B weights, either as presently set or as provided by HB 2064, as 1856 FLORES v. HORNE the district court concluded, but in fact likely exceed $1,000 per student, both in Nogales and statewide.37 The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors nonetheless maintain that the improvements in ELL achievement in NUSD demonstrate that additional incremental funding is no longer required. To the contrary, the data from NUSD supports our conclusion that the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding otherwise. As Dr. Zamudio testified, resource constraints remain: NUSD still cannot afford to pay market rate salaries to attract the teachers it needs to reduce class sizes to levels more conducive to ELL education, nor can it hire qualified teacher’s aides for the lower grades. That these constraints matter is apparent from the persistent achievement gaps documented in NUSD’s AIMS test data. As we discussed at length above, ELL students in NUSD continue to fall behind their nativeEnglish-speaking counterparts, both statewide and within the district. These gaps grow in the higher grades, as the district court found, and are disturbingly large. Although, as we have noted, the data is limited, the burden here is on the moving parties to prove the factual changes on which they premise their motion to vacate the judgment. See Asarco, 430 F.3d at 979. We cannot say that the district court clearly erred when it found this burden was not met. A district in which the majority of ELL tenth graders fail to meet state achievement standards while the majority of native English speakers pass is not one whose performance demonstrates that the state is 37 Arizona’s ineffectiveness in ascertaining costs has made the question of costs more difficult to answer than it might have been. Because the state’s efforts to gather cost study data were incomplete — the SjobergEvashnek study was inconclusive and the NCSL study was repudiated by the legislature, see HB 2064 § 13(C) — the precise incremental costs of ELL programming are not known and we and the district court must rely on what evidence is in the record from the various cost studies and from NUSD and other districts. FLORES v. HORNE 1857 adequately funding ELL programs and so warrants relief from judgment.38 The Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors respond, essentially, that even if ELL programming costs do exceed ELL-specific funding, there is ample state funding to cover them. They argue, in other words, that focusing solely on ELL-specific funding, and on the Group B weights in particular, is no longer appropriate given general increases in education funding since 2000.39 Such a focus, they contend, mistakes “the details, even the minutiae, of the intermediate methodologies the court has devised” to reach compliance for compliance itself. Glover v. Johnson, 138 F.3d 229, 233 (6th Cir. 1998).40 With this argument, the Superintendent and Leg38 That reclassified students in the 2005-06 school year do about as well as native English speakers, however, is encouraging, and may suggest some degree of success, as does the increase in reclassification rates in NUSD. But because the reclassification standard has repeatedly changed and because the record indicates that reclassification takes many years, the record does not demonstrate that NUSD is succeeding in rapidly and permanently reclassifying ELL students, nor on the time it takes to reclassify students. On the current record, we certainly cannot say that the encouraging data on the scores of reclassified students and on reclassification rates is sufficient to have rendered the district court’s findings clearly erroneous. 39 They also point to the increased institutional support, such as new training and monitoring programs, now provided by the state. That support is of limited relevance, as the need to establish monitoring and training programs was set out in the Flores consent decree. That Arizona may have satisfied the decree, which dealt with issues not included in the Declaratory Judgment, does not mean that the Judgment has also been satisfied. 40 In Glover, a district court overseeing an original judgment ordering parity in the treatment of prisoners regardless of gender was holding the defendants to finely-tuned compliance plans that specified, with great detail, conditions in the prisons. Id. at 233-36. The Sixth Circuit vacated a round of contempt sanctions arising from violations of these plans, emphasizing that the goals of the underlying judgment were simply to fix the underlying gender discrimination and end judicial involvement and warning against “judicial micromanagement.” Id. at 241, 245. As we develop, infra, such micromanagement is not at issue here. 1858 FLORES v. HORNE islative Intervenors seek to reopen matters made final when the Declaratory Judgment was not appealed. The EEOA provides that states must not “deny equal educational opportunity . . . by . . . the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation.” 20 U.S.C. § 1703(f) (emphasis added). Diverting base level funds — thereby hurting all students in an attempt to equalize opportunities for ELL students — is not an “appropriate” step. The district court recognized as much by holding that Arizona had not taken “appropriate” action to comply with the EEOA at Castaneda step two by failing to “set a minimum base funding level per [ELL] student” that was rationally related to costs, regardless of the base level funding provided for all students. Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1239. For eight years, Arizona has attempted to remedy that deficiency in ELL-specific funding, and for eight years the parties have litigated based upon that premise. Unlike in Glover, which repudiated the district court’s excessive concern with specific compliance steps rather than with the core of its judgment, looking to the adequacy of ELL-specific funding does not miss the forest for the trees. It cuts to the heart of this case, which has been about such funding since 2000, when the parties dealt with the other issues in a consent decree. If the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors believed that the district court erred and should have looked at all funding sources differently in its EEOA inquiry, they should have appealed the Declaratory Judgment. They may not now upend its basic legal conclusions. [8] Nor have the fundamentals of the Arizona school funding system changed in any way that undermines the district court’s original conclusion that incremental ELL funding is what matters for EEOA purposes. Accepting the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors’ argument would be to hold that the funding restrictions and categories used by Arizona are meaningless. As we have explained, Arizona allocates FLORES v. HORNE 1859 ELL funding on top of base level support. HB 2010 and HB 2064 have followed this approach. This statutory scheme is still premised on the idea that ELL programming imposes costs additional to those covered by ordinary base level funding. Base level funds are still provided in block grants, as in 2000, and the grants are, as they were in 2000, unrestricted. And base level funding, although apparently not itself based on a clear cost accounting of educational needs, see Roosevelt I, 877 P.2d at 810, must still support most non-ELL educational costs. It is the base level funds that, if NUSD had no ELL students, would be spent on math, reading, writing, and other basic subjects. That funds for both basic educational support and ELL costs have increased does not indicate that the fundamental pattern has changed. In 2000, as today, ELL incremental costs could be covered by diverting basic educational support, hampering the state’s ability to provide a basic education to all Arizona students. So, by underfunding ELL programs and forcing NUSD to dip into those base level funds, Arizona still forces it to choose between base level needs and ELL programs — which the district court refused to view as an answer to ELL funding in 2000, when the option was as available as it is now. That binding legal determination is not now subject to reconsideration.41 41 Federal funds have also been taken out of the compliance calculus by the Declaratory Judgment. The district court understood EEOA compliance to be a state obligation and so ruled when, despite noting the presence of federal grants (which it doubted would be renewed), it held Arizona to be out of compliance with the EEOA for providing inadequate state funding and required Arizona to fund its ELL programs adequately. Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1236, 1239. That unappealed determination still stands. Although federal funds have since increased, we do not find that this increased funding availability undermines the district court’s basic legal determination that the EEOA obligation rests in the first instance with Arizona. Indeed, as we discuss below, federal education funding law is generally designed to layer federal funds on top of state education funding and to ensure that state funds are allocated without regard to federal funds. 1860 FLORES v. HORNE Nor do circumstances in NUSD demonstrate that anything has happened to undermine the district court’s conclusion in the original Declaratory Judgment that adequate levels of ELL-specific funding were critical to EEOA compliance. Ninety percent or more of NUSD students are either still in or have been in ELL programs. It is the same students who will suffer as the district shifts funding away from core educational needs to support ELL programs. When NUSD must choose to fund, say, required structured English immersion endorsements for its staff, rather than expanding its high school math or art offerings, all students will suffer, including ELL students, now as in 2000. In short, the solution posited by the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors— which the amici school districts and school boards in this case call a “Hobson’s choice” — was rejected by the district court as a matter of law in the Declaratory Judgment when it based its holding on ELL-specific funding in general and the Group B weights in particular. Nothing significant has changed to undermine that ruling. Instead, the Superintendent and Legislative Intervenors are simply placing their suggested solution — spending less on basic education so as to have sufficient funds for ELL purposes — on the table after it was necessarily rejected in the unappealed judgment, which requires ELL-specific funding. That they may not do. [9] There was no clear error in the district court’s factual findings and no abuse of discretion in its legal conclusion that the landscape was not so radically changed as to justify relief from judgment without compliance.