Opinion ID: 1113751
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 17

Heading: right to equal educational opportunity

Text: The first matter for inquiry here is whether the language of § 256 supports plaintiffs' contention that the intent of its framers was to provide equal educational opportunities to Alabama schoolchildren. The Court holds that several critical words and phrases in the text of § 256 justify this view. For example, the fact that public schools are to be provided throughout the state for the benefit of the children thereof suggests that not just some, but all children are meant to enjoy the advantages offered by these schools. But, most important for our purposes is the phrase system of public schools, which the legislature is directed to establish, organize and maintain. What, precisely, is meant by a system of public schools? Dr. Alexander, a professor of education who has extensively investigated the history of public or common schools in the United States, has written that [t]he spirit of public schools is that they be `free' and `equal'. Alexander, The Common School Ideal and the Limits of Legislative Authority: The Kentucky Case, 28 Harvard Journal on Legislation 341, 357 (Summer 1991) (citations omitted). This view of public schools is confirmed by a 1938 American Law Reports (A.L.R.) annotation under the title, What is common or public school within contemplation of constitutional or statutory provisions[?], which concluded that [t]he terms `public schools' and `common schools' have in various cases been regarded, broadly speaking, as meaning schools which are free and open to all on equal terms, citing, inter alia, cases in Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington. See 113 A.L.R. 697, 698-99 (1938) (emphasis added). This understanding of the meaning of a system of public schools finds ample support in Alabama. Dr. Harvey testified that Alabama's first state-wide system of public schools, established in 1854, at the outset declared its intent to extend, upon equal terms, to all the children of our State, the inestimable blessings of liberal instruction. 1853-54 Ala. Acts 6 at 8 (emphasis added). Further, prominent among the cases abstracted in the A.L.R. annotation is Elsberry v. Seay, 83 Ala. 614, 3 So. 804 (1887), which specifically construed the meaning of the system of public schools guaranteed by the prototype of § 256, appearing in the 1875 Alabama constitution, as follows: [43] [A] system of public schools has been established in every state of the Union, varying in details, but all preserving the leading feature and distinguishing characteristicthe extension of the opportunities and benefits of popular education to all the children of the state. From the necessity of their origin, and from the fundamental principles on which they are founded and have been fostered, common or public schools have acquired a well-defined popular signification.... With knowledge of this popular meaning, as understood from general history, and especially from the nature and character of the legislation of this state, the convention framed the constitution of 1875 for adoption by the people. Controlled by the conservative principle that the diffusion of knowledge, at least elementary, is essential to the preservation of free government, and, as conducive to this end, the extension of the opportunities and advantages of education through the various parts of the state, the convention declared and incorporated in the organic law that a system of public schools shall be established, organized, and maintained; but, for the first time in the state constitution, specially designated its character, extent and purposes. The constitutional system of common schools must extend throughout the state, and must afford equal benefit to all the children thereof within the specified years. The general assembly is without authority to establish a system of common schools which does not possess, in its entirety, those distinguishing features. It is more than a presumption that the term public schools was employed in the constitution in its popular meaning and sense,the system of public schools to which the people of the state had been accustomed, and as they would understand it, in adopting the constitution. As we have said in another case, the system of public schools commanded to be established, organized, and maintained, was intended to operate upon, and in favor of, all the children equally, without special local privileges to any. Schultes v. Eberly, 82 Ala. 242, 2 South.Rep. 345. Id., 3 So. at 806-07 (emphases added). Three years after the Elsberry case was decided, in 1890, State Superintendent of Schools Solomon Palmer wrote, in an essay addressing The Legal Status of the Public Schools, that: The public school is the great highway to knowledgeto enlightened citizenship. As all are compelled to contribute to its support, so all have a right to use it, but none must be allowed to use it so as to interfere with its enjoyment by others. Equality in maintaining and equality in enjoying, is the proper motto for every public school. The public school, the public highway to knowledge and enlightened citizenship, is the common property of a people differing widely in intelligence, in opinions, in wealth, in traditions, in social position, in morals, and in religion. But no matter what one's station or rank, whether high or low, rich or poor, his legal rights and obligations are as fixed and inviolable in the public school as in the State itself. Palmer, The Legal Status of the Public Schools, Thirty-sixth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Education of the State of Alabama (1890) (hereinafter, Palmer Report ) append. H at xcv (emphasis added). Thus, under the 1875 constitution, there is little doubt that the system of public schools there mandated was intended to provide equal educational opportunity. Did the defined popular signification of these terms, Elsberry, 3 So. at 805, change in the 11 years between the time of Superintendent Palmer's report and the 1901 constitutional convention? The Governor offered no direct historical evidence that it did so, and the framers certainly retained the phrase system of public schools intact in § 256 of the 1901 constitution. [44] However, Governor Hunt contends that because the framers struck the word equal as a modifier for benefit from the education clause in 1901, it cannot be argued that § 256 was intended to provide the equality of educational opportunity for which plaintiffs sue. [45] Section 256, on its face, offers no explanation of the significance of this change. In such a case, [t]he proceedings of constitutional conventions are valuable in determining the meaning and purpose of constitutional provisions. Hunt, 588 So.2d at 854. It is evident from these proceedings, as plaintiffs and defendant essentially agree, that equal was stricken from the constitution for racial reasons, apparently to avoid any explicit requirement for equal treatment of the races other than for school terms of equal duration. [46] However, if this deletion were intended to discontinue equal educational opportunity for whites, or otherwise to alter the common understanding of the equitable operation of a system of public schools, it is not apparent from the constitutional proceedings. [47] Instead, President Knox's opening address called for a system of public schools that would place an adequate education within the reach of every child of the state, both rich and poor. Official Proceedings at 15. Perhaps most telling, even as he introduced the Education Committee's proposed education article, from which equal had been excised, John Brown Graham, the chair of that committee, summarized the consensus of the convention in the strongest possible terms: I believe that the delegates of this Convention are unified upon the one subject of public education for all the children of this State, and that they believe it should fall, as the dews and gentle rain, upon all alike, without reference to their condition. Id. at 4162-63. Further, subsequent to the ratification of the 1901 constitution and § 256, the Alabama Supreme Court in In re Opinions of the Justices, 229 Ala. 98, 155 So. 699 (1934), held that the same egalitarian definition given by the Ellsberry Court to the constitutional system of public schools in 1875 applies to § 256 of the 1901 constitution, which the Court construes today: With that interpretation of what the Constitution of 1875 meant by public schools, the adoption of that of 1901, in so far as it preserves the essential features of the former in this respect included the interpretation of it which this court had previously made. In addition to that thought, it seems clear to us as an independent proposition that the public schools are thus correctly defined. Id. 155 So. at 701 (emphasis added). Governor Hunt argues that In re Opinions of the Justices is not authority for plaintiffs' claims because opinions of this kind are advisory only; further, he says, the essential features of the education clause did change with the striking of the modifier equal from the text, so as to render the Court's previous definition of public schools inapplicable. See Hunt Post-Trial Reply Brief at 7-8. As to the former argument, this Court is, of course, aware that opinions of the justices are non-binding. Alabama Education Association v. James, 373 So.2d 1076, 1081 (Ala.1979). However, the constitutional interpretation offered by a unanimous Supreme Court some 34 years closer than we to the constitution at issue is highly persuasive. Further, the same Supreme Court in Tucker v. State ex rel. Poole, 231 Ala. 350, 165 So. 249 (1935), reaffirmed in a non -advisory opinion that the system of public schools mandated by § 256 must operate in favor of all children equally. Id. at 356 [165 So. 249]. As to the latter argument that the essential features of the education clause changed when equal was excised, the Opinions and Tucker Court, which itself set this test, appeared in construing § 256 as a guarantee of equal opportunity to believe to the contrarythat the deletion of equal did not at all change the essential features of that clause, a point much to plaintiffs' benefit. Furthermore, even if these essential features were not preserved, it seem[ed] clear to [the Court] as an independent proposition that the public schools [were] thus correctly defined. Opinions, 155 So. at 701 (emphasis added). The facts adduced by plaintiffs at trial many of which were, again, undisputed or even affirmatively admitted by defendant demonstrate profound and systematic inequities in the educational opportunities offered to schoolchildren in this state. The present system of public schools cannot be said to offer education to Alabama schoolchildren on equal terms or with equal benefit, or to operate upon, and in favor of, all children equally, without special local privileges to any. Opinions, 155 So. at 701 (citing Schultes v. Eberly, 82 Ala. 242, 2 So. 345 (1887)). Educational opportunities in this state do not fall, as the dews and gentle rain, upon all alike, without reference to their condition. Official Proceedings at 4162-63. Accordingly, the Court holds that Alabama's present system of public schools violates the constitutional right of plaintiffs to equal educational opportunity as guaranteed by Ala. Const. art. XIV, § 256.