Category: Uncategorized

Here is the bottom line paragraph from today’s judgment from the Texas Supreme Court:

We now hold, as did the district court, that local ad
valorem taxes have become a state property tax in violation of article
VIII, section 1-e, as we warned ten years ago they inevitably would,
absent a change in course, which has not happened. Although the
districts have offered evidence of deficiencies in the public school
finance system, we conclude that those deficiencies do not amount to a
violation of article VII, section 1. We remain convinced, however, as
we were sixteen years ago, that defects in the structure of the public
school finance system expose the system to constitutional
challenge. Pouring more money into the system may forestall those
challenges, but
only for a time. They will repeat until the system is overhauled.

This means that the lawsuit initiated by ‘rich districts’ (the West
Orange Cove plaintiffs) has succeeded. They can tax and spend at higher
rates.

In the short run, the court is ruling against further claims
by intervenors from ‘poor districts’ (Edgewood and Alvarado plaintiffs)
that the funding of Texas schools is otherwise unconstitutional because
of alleged inequality and poor overall performance. But the court warns
that this short term ruling may be quite short term indeed if state
policy makers read this ruling as a vote of confidence.  Oooh.  Bet that’ll scare them into action!–gm

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / Houston / NorthTexas

In the relationship between knowledge and freedom, children derive
their right to free education. Take for example the Texas constitution
of 1875 (Article VII, Section 1):

A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the
preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the
duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable
provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of
public free schools.

Into this succinct line of reasoning is packed a serious claim.
Where there is no suitable education, there can be no real hope of
preserving rights and liberties; therefore, elected representatives
have a duty to establish, support, and maintain public schools.

Yet in the wake of the latest collective judgment handed down by the
Texas Supreme Court, we are left shaking our heads. The court has
affirmed that Texas is dead last among the fifty states of the USA when
it comes to high school literacy among adults 25 and older. And the
court has stipulated that high-school-dropout rates consume fully half
of the state’s Hispanic students and nearly half of African Americans.
Yet, the court finds this system of public education adequate,
suitable, and efficient.
Had the court wanted to signal a higher standard of respect
for ‘essential’ conditions of education, justices could not have
concocted a more timely environment. A state district court had already
ruled the education system unconstitutional, and the legislature had
convened several special sessions ordered by the governor in open
admission that something better should be done. But legislators, time
after time, had failed; until finally they said it might be better to
wait until the high court gave guidance.

Because the trial court, the governor, and the legislature were already
behaving as if a constitutional crisis in education had been reached,
the Texas high court had only to stand squarely on the side of the
rights and liberties of the people to issue a profound and lifting
command. Yet the court retreated from the rights of the people and
aligned itself instead with the prerogatives of a decadent legislature,
whose inability to agree on some better course of action now stands in
a sentimental glow of constitutional sympathy.

Instead of casting into 21st Century law a progressive
commitment to vigorous support for the “essential” institution of
public ed, the court tottered backward, deferred to backward looking
comparisons, and anchored its logic squarely in 19th Century habits of
mind that have usually blunted the keen logic of the constitution.

With a decisive choice before it, whether to raise
expectations for the people or lower expectations for the legislature,
the court decided that deference to the legislature was its wisest
course. And so the court, when served up with a critical and hard-fought
opportunity to enliven the relationship between knowledge and liberty
among the people (an opportunity that will take many years to rebuild)–the court abandons its rare and recent tradition
of trying to be part of the public education solution.

In its deferential (cozy) embrace of the legislature, the
court decided that so long as the legislature is not being “arbitrary”
in its provision of education, its crucial provisions for the rights
and liberties of the people cannot be second guessed.

But what requires the court to be deferential to the legislature when
it comes to assessing public education, especially if public education
is so clearly founded on the need to preserve the liberties and rights
of the people? It is to the liberties and rights of the people that the
court is more urgently bound to defer, not to the liberties and rights
of the legislature.

A plain reading of the legislature’s actions since 1875 prove
that in the absence of a jealous court, the state legislature tends to
deflate the concept of public education, preferring to keep the rights
and liberties of some people hostage to the rights and liberties of
others. The paradigm for this pattern is marked out in two words: Jim
Crow.

Or to put it another way, if a jealous court is not actively
protecting the rights and liberties of the people one and all, then the
promise and hope of democracy loses an essential foundation of
legitimacy within the state structure upheld by that court. A lousy
court results not only in a lousy state, but in lousy hopes that the
state can ever be democratically reformed. Yet the court in this case
seems to believe that a lousy court can motivate a lousy legislature to
do what it has never voted to do to date without court pressure. As a result of the court
ruling, the promise of education for democracy in Texas is once again a revolutionary hope.

It’s not just that the Klan has joined Republicans and Christians in
the initiative to constitutionalize homophobia in Texas. The
Klan’s logic is the same. Go ahead guess: Governor, Preacher, or Grand Dragon, who said this?
"We believe that as Christians we have an obligation under god to take
a stand against homosexuality. Homosexuality is a sin and an
abomination to God and goes against our Lord’s plans for the human
race."
Purely on a theological level we wonder, do the Lord’s plans for the human race involve free choices of conscience?

For quite a different message than the Klan coalition’s, try No Nonsense in November

We’re with Justice Brister in the early part of his dissent, when he
complains that the decision of the
Texas Supreme Court is too attentive to the arguments of rich
districts, and not attentive enough to the concerns of the poor.
"The constitutional guarantee invoked here requires an efficient system
of public schools; it cannot be used to demand more funding for an
inefficient system."

In the name of ‘efficiency,’ several school districts again
ask the Texas courts to close the Texas public schools unless the Texas
Legislature increases funding. Over the last two decades, we have been
asked to do this every two or three years, and have generally complied.
The Court goes too far by doing so again today. First, the Court finds
school districts are forced to tax at the highest possible rate only
because some of them do. Second, though only five percent of the
State=s school districts claim a single statute is unconstitutional,
the Court enjoins the State from distributing any money under the
current Texas school financing system, an order that applies to every
school district in Texas. Thus, because some districts get too little
state money, all districts may get none. It is hard to see how this
will help Texas school children.

Yet the Court also does not go far enough. By failing to
demand an ‘efficient system’ as the Texas Constitution requires, or to
demand standing and proof as Texas law requires, this case once again
focuses on short-term funding rather than long-term solutions.

Of course, the true goal of this litigation is to put pressure
on the Texas Legislature. We demanded legislative changes by holding
the Texas school-finance system unconstitutional in Edgewood I,
Edgewood II, and Edgewood III; we warned that we might do so again soon
in Edgewood IV and West Orange-Cove I. The Court fulfills that threat
today. But there is no end in sight; if the past is any indication, the
new funding will not last long, and public education will not change
much. Before we bequeath Edgewood VIII, IX, and X to our grandchildren,
we should consider whether we might do more by doing less. As the Court
fails to do so today, I respectfully dissent.

Having said this, Justice Brister then goes in a direction that is
troubling to the concept of public education. He would prefer to see
privatization, because the only way to an efficient anything is through
‘competition’. This is the kind of pressure he would put on the
legislature. "No one asked whether it might be efficient to transfer students across district lines, or transfer funds to private providers that could meet their needs better." So we see this dissent actually comes down to the right of
the opinion, not the left. Oh, Texas!