Opinion ID: 1789805
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: From Equity to Adequacy

Text: Education in Missouri is a state function. MO. CONST. art. IX, sec. 1(a); see also Bd. of Educ. of City of St. Louis v. Missouri State Bd. of Educ., 271 S.W.3d 1 (Mo. banc 2008). Funding of that function is a combination of local, state and federal sources. All such funding follows prescriptions in the state constitution and laws. Id. Changes in the system of school finance are the province of the state legislature so long as they adhere to the constitution. The legislative process by its nature creates winners and losers, relatively speaking. The legislature has wide latitude to make these choices. Constitutional limits exist to keep the choices within certain prescribed bounds, which in this case would keep the system from being unduly rigged to favor winners who can muster legislative majorities. With the help of various state courts and school finance experts, the focus of litigation and legislative efforts has shifted from concerns about equity to adequacy. [13] This shift is evident in the recent changes that have occurred in the funding formula that is challenged in this lawsuit, which started mainly as a challenge on equity grounds to the state's 1993 school funding formula. The 1993 law, in turn, was enacted in part as a response to a court judgment that held the state's school financing was so inequitable as to be constitutionally deficient. [14] As in other states, experience has shown that it has not been economically and politically feasible to provide equal resources to every school district within a state. Nor, as noted, can it be said that a constitution that relies on local school districts and local taxation to support education is a constitution that demands equality between and among those districts. Accordingly, litigation and legislative reforms have focused on the more modest goal of providing a so-called adequate education to children in every district, regardless of a district's property wealth. [15] The stumbling block to equalityand the barrier to some districts that may wish to aim for something more than adequacyis the fundamental premise that schools are mainly a matter of local concern, to be financed principally at the local level and controlled by local citizenry. Financial reality reinforces this premise, because the school finance system is built on a property tax system that is the main support of local school districts. From its humblest agrarian roots, public education has maintained its distinctly local flavor, [16] despite the infusion of money from the state, which comes with state standards related to quality, and the infusion of federal requirements that in recent years have been accompanied by some modest financial support. [17] State funding became imperative once it became clear that local sources were inadequate to meet the challenge of making students competitive in a regional economy. Federal support has increased with the realization that our children are competing in a global marketplace, though the federal governmentwhich in recent years has provided about eight percent of Missouri's school fundingthus far seems more adept at imposing requirements than in providing money. Perhaps some federal stimulus money will help. [18] The perception of the local character of public education serves two purposes in the modern era. First, the funding of public education is heavily dependent on local property taxes. In Missouri, local property taxes provide more than 40 percentor about $3 billion annuallyfor the support of public schools. [19] Sixty percent of all property taxes go to funding local schools. It is important, therefore, to maintain the support of the local voters who must approve property tax rates and who vote on bond issues for school construction and other capital needs. Over the long run, local efforts to fund public education have been the most effective means of raising money for schools, perhaps because of a strong motivation to gain an advantage for our own children. Second, the view of school funding as local mitigates the shame that otherwise might be felt when one compares the disparities of resources available across the state. These disparitieswhere the lowest spending districts have only one-third of the money of the highest-spending districtspersist despite the fact that the entire scheme of funding public education is dictated by state law under the authority of the state constitution. [20] For instance, the property tax wealth per pupil in the wealthiest districts is 15 to 20 times that of the property tax wealth per pupil in the poorest districts. [21] Because different districts end up with different monetary results, a racecourse analogy may be used, because the word curriculum is derived from the early Latin word for racecourse. [22] It may be said that the good districts are winning a race, but one should acknowledge that the state has given each district a different starting point or that the state has made the racecourse uphill for some districts and downhill for others. The least we can do is to avoid adding to their humiliation by saying that poor districts are losing because they are bad districts ... they do not try hard enough to support local schools, the neighborhoods are less supportive and the parents ... well, you see my point. This systemstatewide in design but local in its effectsis rigged. Those of us who live in urban areas are aware that residential real estate prices are affected by the perceptions about the quality of the schools in a district. The rich districts get richer because desirable schools help to raise property values, and higher property values make it easier for the schools to get more property tax revenue. One can imagine that, given a choice of parents, a child might choose wealthier parents than he or she was given. One might also imagine that a child would choose a school district with greater resources than the one that serves his or her family. While it is absurd to suggest that a child could choose his or her parents, it is not at all absurd to suggest that the state should mitigate the effects of the choice that the child was not given as to his or her school district. Establishing a standard of adequacy may seem to be a step toward mitigating the effects of the child's family circumstances, but the current effort seems paltry in light of the stakes involved. Despite the establishment of an adequacy standard, the short-run advantage gained by wealthier districts may not be for the common good in the long run. We act locally in the belief that we are doing the best for our own children, but in today's highly mobile society, in our local areas we really are educating the future citizens of other communities. The child growing up today in Hannibal, Nevada, or Tarkio (to pick a few towns more or less at random) may be the citizen of Cape Girardeau, Kansas City, or Springfield tomorrow. The advantage that we seek for our child of today is not just with others in his or her community but those in the child's future community. Because the marketplace within which the child must compete now is recognized as global, the provision of educationalways a fundamental purpose of Missouri's governmenttakes on profound importance in an increasingly education-driven marketplace.