CSBA lawsuit charges budget flouts constitution
Prop. 98 violations cost schools $2.1 billion
Published: October 1, 2011
CSBA and its Education Legal Alliance, along with the Association of California School Administrators and the San Francisco, Los Angeles and Turlock unified school districts, sued the state of California last month, arguing that the state budget shortchanges students and violates the California Constitution by improperly diverting more than $2 billion that should have gone to public schools under Proposition 98.
“Every year schools seem to get the short end of the stick, but this year was especially egregious,” said CSBA President Martha Fluor, who joined representatives from the other plaintiff organizations at a Sept. 28 press conference in Sacramento to discuss the legal challenge. “These cuts are a clear violation of Proposition 98 and are therefore unconstitutional.”
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers improperly disregarded Proposition 98’s minimum funding guarantee for education when they diverted billions of dollars in general fund revenues that should have gone to public schools, using the money to pay for other state services instead. Proposition 98, a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1988, contains provisions that permit temporary diversions in times of fiscal crisis, but it clearly requires the state to repay the money.
“Although lawmakers acknowledge this shortfall, there is no guarantee that the money will ever be repaid,” said ACSA President Alice Petrossian, who appeared with Fluor at the Sacramento press conference.
The lawsuit alleges that the state’s 2011-12 Budget Act created “a convoluted and speculative plan” to compensate schools for the roughly $2.1 billion owed them, a plan that assumes the future success of as-yet undrafted or voter-approved ballot initiatives or some other way “to restore the required funding at a later date.”
These vague repayment provisions, the suit argues, “constitute an implicit admission by the state that its actions were unconstitutional.”
Fluor said the $2.1 billion owed schools amounts to $10,000 for every classroom in the state—money, she said, that could go toward restoring vital programs like sports, the arts, summer school, library services and after-school tutoring.
“It’s time to say ‘basta’—enough,” said Carlos Garcia, superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, also speaking at the press conference. “It’s time to say we’re not going to put up with this anymore. We’re going to stand up for ourselves.”
CSBA General Counsel Abe Hajela hopes the court will order the state to refund the money owed schools by the end of this fiscal year June 30, 2012. “It won’t happen by next week or next month,” he cautioned.
Hajela said the issues in the new Proposition 98 lawsuit are far more straightforward than those raised in Robles-Wong v. California, CSBA’s 2010 school finance lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the state’s school finance system. That suit is still making its way through the courts.
“We have not abandoned that case,” said Hajela, “but this is a completely different issue.”
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