Officials have not 'lived up to the promise,' report says
by Seth Blomeley
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Supreme Court-appointed masters came down strongly on the side of school districts in filing a report Monday saying the Legislture and Gov. Mike Huckabee retreated from the push to improve eduction in Arkansas.
"From the largely, uncontradicted evidence presented by the [school districts], we must conclude that the state has not lived up to the promise...to make education the state's first priority," the masters wrote.
State officials were complacent during the 2005 regular session and seemed assured that what they did during the 2003-2004 special session sufficed because the Supreme Court was satisfied at that time, the masters said.
"It is apparent that an atmosphere of satisfaction prevailed among state officials," the report says. "They seemed satisfied...that they could simply rest upon the laurel bestowed by the court [last year]."
Chief among the complaints from school districts is the state froze per-student "foundation" funding at $5,400. The masters found that action by the state "difficult to defend."
"The masters are former state Supreme Court Justices Bradley Jesson of Fort Smith and David Newbern of Little Rock. They suggested that a remedy exists with a multimillion-dollar state surplus that could be appropriated to schools during a special legislative session.
The next step lies with the Supreme Court. The court may order further briefings and hearings. If the justices side with the masters, it's unclear whether the court will order a specific remedy, recommend a special session or be satisfied to wait until the next regular session in 2007.
Huckabee was in Arlington, Va., for a meeting of the Education Commission of the States. He gave no indication whether he would call a special session.
GOVERNOR'S REACTION
The governor's office had nothing positive to say about the masters' report, which it called "convoluted and confusing." Huckabee's office was particularly critical of the masters' implying that more school district consolidation should have been attempted.
"The report suprisingly accuses the governor of not being an active particpant," Huckabee spokesman Jim Harris said in a prepared statement. "Yet it was the Supreme Court itself that rejected the governor's claims over a year ago that the state should do more. The court declared the state had done an adequate job and the governor accepted the verdict as final. Now the masters are accusing the governor of not pushing for reforms when in fact he simply trusted the court in its supposedly final decision and took them at their word that the case was over. The governor feels the masters are accusing him of leaving the playing field when it was the court itself who fired the gun and said the game was over on that issue."
Huckabee presented an aggressive consolidation plan in the 2003-04 special session. The Legislature passed a watered-down version. Huckabee last year hired a lawyer to push for the Supreme Court to order more consolidation but the Supreme Court accepted the legislative plan.
The masters noted that state officials have said that inefficiencies continue with "our having more than 250 school districts [but] the issue has been ignored or forgotten."
SCHOOLS’ REACTION School officials were happy with the report.
"It looks to me that the school districts and their attorneys made a pretty compelling argument that the masters pretty much agreed with," said Kellar Noggle, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators. "I would anticipate we’ll be back in special session by the end of the year."
David Matthews of Lowell, the lead lawyer for the 49 districts that sued the state over school funding, said it appeared the masters accepted that the districts’ arguments were well founded.
"The plain and simple fact is that the state defendants tried to take a break on the education reform journey," Matthews said in an e-mail. "They were pleased with the judicial response from last year and erroneously thought that freed them to move on to other issues. Any time a General Assembly takes a year off on school funding it will just put the schools further behind in the future. We have played catch up for way too long. It is now time to fully fund our education investment EVERY year, before we try to meet other non-mandated expenses of government."
Matthews is a former state legislator.
BEEBE’S REACTION Attorney General Mike Beebe, whose job is to defend state laws, represented the Legislature and the governor before the masters during two weeks of hearings last month.
"Education is this state’s top priority," he said in a statement released by his office. "The question before the court is still whether the new money already invested in Arkansas schools is enough, or whether the taxpayers must invest more. We need to ensure that Arkansas is getting the best use of the education dollars already being spent. I appreciate the tireless work of the masters, who again stepped up to tackle a massive task at the request of the court."
Beebe is the likely Democratic nominee for governor in 2006.
HUTCHINSON’S REACTION Beebe’s likely Republican opponent, former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, said last week the Legislature was wrong to freeze per-student public school funding.
Hutchinson said in reaction to the masters’ report that simply spending more money isn’t the answer.
"However, we must also set priorities for our state’s limited budget," Hutchinson said. "Our legislators did not set the right priorities when they decided to fund dozens of pet projects all across the state while not providing for cost-of-living increases to help our schools keep up with rising costs."
REPORT’S DETAILS The masters gave numerous reasons in the 83-page report why Huckabee and the Legislature didn’t do enough. Those include: School districts are shouldering a greater burden in funding schools because of the $5,400-per-student funding being frozen for 2005-06 and being raised slightly in 2006-07 to $5,497. That’s because the local share is rising because of increased property tax assessments, leaving less of the $5,400 that must be funded by the state.
The Legislature passed numerous laws in 2005 that increase costs to school districts, including mandated duty-free lunch periods for teachers, mandated 40 minutes for teacher preparation time, mandated teachers raises and mandated vision screening for students, and anticipated increased retirement costs.
Superintendents testified they would have to dip into their fund balances to maintain standards.
Legislators and Huckabee administration officials didn’t concentrate on how to provide an adequate education. Instead, they focused on how to divide available dollars.
The push to increase per-student funding appears to have been "pitted against" a push to add state supplements for teachers’ health insurance. The Legislature agreed to do the latter, costing $35 million a year. The masters said the health insurance money was good "but its effect upon education is indirect at best and does not excuse the failure to fund education resources adequately."
The state didn’t follow Act 57 of the 2003-04 special session calling for a study of the costs of providing an adequate education before the 2005 session.
The state appears to have accepted a "new plan for district consolidation" that involves waiting for the districts to fail academically, fiscally or by not improving their facilities. This approach "ignores what is happening in the classrooms during the years leading up to" the forced consolidation.
The state’s appropriating $120 million to fix school facilities did "not come close to addressing the state’s public school facilities."
The masters appeared to question the Legislature’s decision to again hire Picus and Associates of North Hollywood, Calif., to "conduct yet another study" on school adequacy. "These matters have already been sufficiently studied by outside experts." The masters said it was the Legislature’s responsibility to come up with proper funding amounts.
The state expects to have surplus revenues of about $330 million.
The Legislature spent several million dollars on numerous pet projects.
LEGISLATORS’ REACTION The two witnesses Beebe presented to the masters last month were state Sens. Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, and Shane Broadway, D-Bryant. They said Monday they were disappointed by the report.
"I would say a [special session] appears likely," Argue said. "I doubt the court is going to reject the masters’ report."
He said the masters seemed to question the "wealth index" devised by legislators that gives districts various percentages of state support to help with facilities needs. The masters noted that the index doesn’t take facilities needs of each district into account.
Argue said he thought the index did what the court wanted, which is to help prop up poor districts.
Broadway questioned the masters’ wanting more to be done on facilities.
"I’m not going to spend a lot of time and money on something we don’t have data on," Broadway said.
CASE HISTORY This case originated in 1992 when a lawsuit was filed by the now-defunct Lake View district. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that public school funding was inadequate and inequitable and, as such, violated the state constitution.
After legislators did little to address those problems in 2003 and dragged their feet during a 2004-04 special session, the court reopened by case. The state then instituted numerous reforms including a $380 million-a-year tax increase for schools and some school district consolidation.
The court appointed Jesson and Newbern as masters to examine the news laws.
In April 2004, the masters summed up the work of the Legislature .
Afterward, the Supreme Court last year generally complimented the Legislature, then exited the case.
But in April this year after the 2005 session, districts filed to reopen the case, saying not enough was done to follow up on the improvement the previous year.
In June, the Supreme Court reappointed the masters for this new evaluation of the situation.
For further information on the masters report, view the following link: Lakeview Special Masters Report
