Court Opinion

ID: 9794159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:00:37.692853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:12:35.686928
License: Public Domain

*861MOSK, J.
I dissent.
The majority discuss at length the somewhat tortuous proceedings leading up to the present litigation. But there is a more fundamental principle involved: whether every pupil in California, regardless of economic circumstances, is entitled to a free public school process, including transportation. (See Hartzell v. Connell (1984) 35 Cal.3d 899 [201 Cal.Rptr. 601, 679 P.2d 35] [extracurricular activities]; Manjares v. Newton (1966) 64 Cal.2d 365 [49 Cal.Rptr. 805, 411 P.2d 901] [school bus service].)
The majority strayed from this basic, indeed constitutional, principle in their prevailing opinion in Arcadia Unified School Dist. v. State Dept, of Education (1992) 2 Cal.4th 251 [5 Cal.Rptr.2d 545, 825 P.2d 438] (Arcadia). It is regrettable that they persist in that untenable position in the present case.
The importance of school transportation was stressed almost half a century ago in the case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947) 330 U.S. 1, 48 [91 L.Ed. 711, 740, 67 S.Ct. 504, 168 A.L.R. 1392], in which Justice Rutledge, joined by Justices Frankfurter, Jackson, and Burton, observed: “Without buildings, without equipment, without library, textbooks and other materials, and without transportation to bring teacher and pupil together in such an effective teaching environment, there can be not even the skeleton of what our times require. Hardly can it be maintained that transportation is the least essential of these items, or that it does not in fact aid, encourage, sustain and support, just as they do, the very process which is its purpose to accomplish. No less essential is it, or the payment of its cost, than the very teaching in the classroom or payment of the teacher’s sustenance.” (Dis. opn. of Rutledge, J.) The remaining justices in Everson did not disagree with this observation of Justice Rutledge; indeed, they went so far as to approve public funding of transportation to private schools.
That children of parents on welfare may possibly obtain a waiver of transportation costs does not solve the problem, particularly for those industrious working parents struggling to make ends meet in these difficult economic times. Most significantly, the Constitution guarantees access to free public schooling to all, not merely to indigents. (Cal. Const., art. IX, § 5.) As I pointed out in my dissent in Arcadia (supra, 2 Cal.4th 251, 270): “A waiver for the poorest families, such as those receiving public aid, still requires the ‘working poor’ to cut necessities in order to educate their children. If it comes down to a choice between grocery money and busfare, the child will be the loser.” (Fn. omitted.) When the child cannot physically get to school for an education, he loses—and society loses as well.
*862Sensitive to the needs of free public education and constitutional requirements, the Court of Appeal was correct. I would affirm its judgment.