Court Opinion

ID: 9538824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:42:13.106756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:10.998430
License: Public Domain

THOMAS, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in all the majority has said in this case. As the only member of the current court who participated in Washakie County Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Herschler, 606 P.2d 310 (Wyo.1980), cert. denied sub nom., Hot Springs County Sch. Dist. No. 1 v. Washakie, 449 U.S. 824, 101 S.Ct. 86, 66 L.Ed.2d 28 (1980), I must express my disappointment at legislative shortfall. Washakie should have been sufficient to explain the failure to satisfy the constitutional requirements. The legislature has not done what it promised in its preamble to the 1983 legislation redesigning the school financing structure. Instead of reducing disparity in funding education, that disparity has been exacerbated. Whether the State Department of Education’s efforts were stymied by lack of funding or executive shortfall may be debatable. In any event, what was intended to happen never occurred.
I am reminded of a remote broadcast of an Army-Navy football game in the early 1950s. During an exciting moment of play in the fourth quarter, the announcer, a person who enjoys renown in his field, described the action on the field in this way: “Look, there’s a fumble rolling around in the air!”
While I do not claim any expertise in educational funding, it is my impression a formula can be developed that will begin with an appropriate baseline for equal funding, whether on a classroom basis or on an individual student basis. Appropriately, that baseline will be adjusted to account for disparities representing actual cost differentials from district to district and supported by empirical data. I believe the financial records of the several school districts, in the hands of a competent cost accountant, will provide the facts essential to those adjustments. Obviously the measurable factors impacting the costs of education from place to place are not total mysteries and can be factually demonstrated rather than assumed. This is the sort of system the Washakie court envisioned. It was never the vision of the Washakie court that the constitutional mandates could be satisfied by expert opinion and arbitrary advisors. Certainly, that approach is unconscionable when facts are available.
As the majority suggests, it may be essential to “a complete and uniform system of public education” to depart from the traditional tax methodology for school financing and simply implement a statewide levy that will be adequate to satisfy the constitutional mandates. That would readily avoid the wealth-based complications represented by the local mill levies and the recapture provisions. Equitable division of that sort of education fund would be far better than the current method with its propensities for catering to local demands and issues.