Opinion ID: 2509859
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Ordinary Meaning of Special Schools

Text: The question that controls this case is what makes a public school special as that term is used in Article VIII, Section V, Paragraph VII of the 1983 Constitution. In interpreting the provisions of a constitution, it is to be presumed that the words therein used were employed in their natural and ordinary meaning; and, where a word has a technical as well as a popular meaning, the courts will generally accord to it its popular signification, unless the nature of the subject indicates or the context suggests that it is used in a technical sense. Constitutions are the result of popular will, and their words are to be understood ordinarily in the sense they convey to the popular mind. Clarke v. Johnson, 199 Ga. 163, 164-165, 33 S.E.2d 425 (1945) (citation omitted). Accord Williamson v. Schmid, 237 Ga. 630, 632, 229 S.E.2d 400 (1976).
The first place that we usually look to determine the ordinary meaning of words is a good dictionary. See Clarke, 199 Ga. at 165, 33 S.E.2d 425; Williamson, 237 Ga. at 632, 229 S.E.2d 400. That is what the trial court did in this case, consulting Webster's New World College Dictionary, which says that special means simply of a kind different from others, followed by similar definitions that give the term a broad meaning juxtaposed to antonyms like common, general, or ordinary. Accord Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1967) (listing as the first definition of special: distinguished by some unusual quality: UNCOMMON. . . .). As discussed in Division I(I)-(J) above, commission charter schoolsand the three appellee schools in particularare different from common, general, or ordinary K-12 public schools in Georgia in multiple ways. Most significantly, each charter school is individually created by the Commission, exercising authority delegated by the General Assembly. They are established outside a local school system, pursuant to an individualized, performance-based contract, and the schools are not required to abide by all of the statutes and regulations that ordinarily govern public education. The charter schools are also different from ordinary public schools in the way they are managed, overseen, and funded. Tellingly, the majority gets around to mentioning the natural and ordinary meaning principle of constitutional interpretation only as a final consideration in its opinion, see Maj. Op. at 779and even then it studiously avoids reference to any dictionary or other source of ordinary understanding, because those sources demonstrate that special just means different from the norm. The majority contends that special in this context means special student body or special curriculum. Id. at 779. The first of these restrictive definitions is also proposed by the local systems, who argue that special schools has the narrow connotation of special needs schools, special education schools, or special student schools. It would have been easy, of course, for the drafters of the 1983 Constitution (or the 1966 Amendment or 1976 Constitution, for that matter) to include such limiting adjectives, if such a limitation were intended. But they did not do so. The local systems and the majority say that we need to look to other principles of interpretation to find the limited meaning, and we will examine and reject those arguments below. But it is important at the outset to identify a gaping hole in both the local systems' and the majority's textual arguments.
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.
The local systems also contend that because no charter schools existed in 1983, commission charter schools cannot possibly come within the meaning of special schools as used in the 1983 Constitution. This contention was pressed by the local systems in their initial briefs, although they backed away from it in the briefs they submitted after oral argument and the majority does not give it any credence. That is because it is baseless. The application of the words used in a Constitution is not restricted to things and circumstances that existed at the time it was ratified. Otherwise, to give just a couple of the more obvious examples, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution would not apply to speech communicated electronically or digitally or to Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, none of which yet existed as religions in 1791, when the Bill of Rights took effect. Thus, this Court has explained that a constitutional attack on a statute will fail `if upon analysis it appears that the only novelty in the legislation is that approved principles are applied to new conditions.' Williamson v. Housing Auth. of Augusta, 186 Ga. 673, 693, 199 S.E. 43 (1938) (citation omitted). The proper standard for applying old constitutional words to new circumstances was set forth in Collins v. Mills, 198 Ga. 18, 30 S.E.2d 866 (1944), in considering whether lumber qualified as a farm product as that phrase was used in a 1912 constitutional amendment: A provision of the constitution is to be construed in the sense in which it was understood by the framers and the people at the time of its adoption. Accordingly, the amendment of 1912 means now precisely what it meant at that time. The business of farming, however, may change both as to method and as to things produced, and changes in the latter respect may from time to time add new crops to the catalogue of farm products. In such case, the exemption would apply to the new products, as well as to the old, and would do so, even though the new products may have been entirely unknown, and hence not specifically within the minds of the people at the time such constitutional provision was adopted. This would involve only an application of the same constitution to new conditions arising by natural processes, and would not mean that the constitution itself had been changed. Id. at 22, 30 S.E.2d 866. The question, therefore, is not whether the people of Georgia who framed and ratified the 1983 Constitution contemplated the existence of charter schools, but rather whether schools that are created by the General Assembly outside the local school systems through individual charters, and that differ from local schools in numerous ways, could come within the meaning of special schools as citizens in 1983 understood that termstarting with the ordinary meaning of the words used.