Access: Education Finance Litigation, School Funding Policy and Advocacy

Access News: Education funding news from across the county

Grand Forks Herald
Published: April 25, 2007

EDITORIAL: A historic deal on school financing
Tom Dennis for the Herald

Apr. 25--The bill isn't perfect, and school officials in some districts have a legitimate gripe.

But the school funding bill that sailed through the North Dakota Legislature on Monday still is an exceptional achievement. You can see that in the bipartisan supermajorities that voted for the bill in both houses: 43-2 in the Senate, 78-15 in the House. You can see it in the fact that not only does the support cross party lines, it bridges east-west and urban-rural divides, too.

And you can see it in the news from other states, where litigation costs have soared, frustration has mounted, and the disputes seem never to end. North Dakota has avoided those outcomes, if the agreement reached Monday holds up. That's an achievement that'll be remembered for a long, long time.

Here is a sampling of "the road not taken" by North Dakota -- the road that has led to decades-long courtroom battles in some states. The controversies have generated several books, including "Courting failure: How school-finance lawsuits exploit judges' good intentions and harm our children" (Education Next Books, 2006).

"In May 1993, a class action lawsuit was filed in state court in Manhattan alleging that Gov. Mario Cuomo and the state Legislature were denying 'thousands of public school students in the City of New York their constitutional rights to equal educational opportunities, and their right to an education that meets minimum statewide educational standards,'" author Sol Stern writes.

"Thirteen years and more than $50 million in court costs and lawyers' fees later, Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. New York is still being vigorously legislated."

That's New York's experience. Similar lawsuits have been brought in 45 of the 50 states, reports the National Access Network, a project of Columbia University's Teachers College.

Those states include New Jersey, where "judicial involvement in education finance reform began over three decades ago and deepened more recently because the state was slow to implement reforms," the National Access Network reports.

In Kansas, school-finance litigation started with Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 desegregation ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawsuits have been ongoing almost the whole time since.

And in Wyoming, "the struggle over school finance is a battle that has waged on since the 1970s and has been greatly influenced by school funding lawsuits," according to the Access network.

Avoiding such outcomes is a spectacular achievement, especially because it means state money will wind up in the schools rather than in attorneys' hands. The governor, the Legislature and the school districts that proved willing to compromise deserve congratulations and thanks.