Legal Updates

California Plaintiffs Pursue Innovative Equal Protection Claim

Responding to a court order that had dismissed their adequacy claims but allowed their equal protection claims to proceed to trial, plaintiffs in two major California litigations, Robles-Wong and Campaign for Quality Education have amended their complaints and now assert that thousands of children in California are being denied “an equal opportunity …to succeed in learning the content of the educational standards established by the state.” The trial judge had specifically held that such a claim would pass constitutional muster.

These equal protection claims go well beyond traditional pleadings in fiscal equity cases that have focused on disparities in resources available to students in different school districts. By relating equal protection to an opportunity to learn in accordance with the state’s academic content standards, these expanded equity claims include many allegations that normally are included in adequacy cases like the assertion that the state has a duty to provide “a meaningful education that prepares students for civic, economic and social success.” (Campaign Second Amended Compl., p. 59).

Arguably, this new approach to equal protection goes even further than traditional adequacy claims because it is not tied to any base foundation level and relating opportunity to the state’s outcome standards implies that the state has an obligation to provide the full range of supportive services (such as early childhood services, extra time on task, health and family support services) that students from poverty backgrounds generally need in order to meet the state’s academic standards. Indeed, the Campaign’s complaint specifically calls for “high quality pre-school opportunities). Id at p. 43-44, and the Robles-Wong complaint cites extended learning time, summer, after school, support services enrichment and extracurricular programs as being essential for students from poverty backgrounds and English language learners to have full and equal access to learning the state’s content standards. Robles-Wong First Amended Compl., pp. 28-44.

Rhode Island Plaintiffs Attack New Funding Formula

Although Rhode Island’s governor and legislature claimed that the new foundation formula they adopted last year would ensure adequate funding for the state’s school children, plaintiffs in a pending adequacy case recently filed an extensive second amended petition that essentially claims that the new formula is a charade, at least as far as low income and English language learners in the plaintiff school districts are concerned.

In 2009, Rhode Island adopted an extensive set of Basic Education Program Regulations (“BEP”) that set forth in detail required curriculum, instructional assessment and evaluation standards that all school districts must implement in order to provide their students an equal educational opportunity for “a high-quality education.” The standards list an extensive array of required academic supports, interventions, and comprehensive services that low income and English language learner students need in order to succeed.  In 2007, a joint legislative committee of the state legislature appointed a technical advisory committee to make recommendations on what the cost is to provide “an equitable and adequate education.”

The plaintiffs’ 85 page second amended complaint sets forth in extensive detail the extent to which the education being provided in specific schools in the plaintiff school districts fails to provide the concrete services called for in the BEP; it also documents a substantial shortfall between the adequacy recommendations of the technical advisory group and the actual funding being provided this year and for the next six years under the formula adopted in 2010. Among other things, plaintiffs claim that over-all state funding under the new formula is 21% below the adequacy amounts determined in 2007 ( and 29% and 31% in the two plaintiff districts), that no extra funding is provided for ELL students, that the foundation amount upon which the formula is based omits critical operational services like utilities, maintenance and transportation, and that virtually no funding is provided for transportation outside the foundation.

Perhaps the most glaring immediate problem with the new formula as described in the new pleading is that full funding of the low “adequacy” amount promised to the plaintiff districts in the 2010 formula will be phased in over seven years, meaning that by the state’s own definition, students will be denied the resources needed to meet the state’s own requirements until at least 2016-2017.