K–12 | Daily Report

A lawsuit filed Thursday is asking the court to scrap California's current educational finance system on the grounds that it's unconstitutional, unstable and failing to meet the needs of students.

Flickr photo by woodlewonderworks

The case, Robles-Wong, et al. v. State of California, was filed in the Alameda County Superior Court. The suit includes more than 60 individual students and their families, nine school districts from throughout the state, the California School Boards Association, California State PTA, and the Association of California School Administrators.

According to a website created to explain the effort, the suit asks the court to compel the state to align its school finance system – its funding policies and mechanisms – with the educational program that the state has put in place.

To do this, state lawmakers must compute what education truly costs and develop adequate spending priorities, the lawsuit says. Currently, California is 47^th among all states in its per-pupil spending on education, spending $2,856 less per pupil than the national average.

California School Board Association President Frank Pugh said in a statement that the state's committment towards education has grown sour.

Filing this lawsuit was a last resort. Education funding has been in a deteriorating spiral in California for decades. A failure to act now threatens the future of California’s students and the future of our state.

The governor and lawmakers have known for some time that the current school finance system is harming students and they’ve done nothing to remedy the crisis. The $17 billion in cuts to education have only made a dire situation even worse. California’s unstable, unsound and insufficient school finance system is robbing our students of an education.”

Late Thursday, Jack O'Connell, California's Superintendent of Public Instruction, issued a statement supporting the funding lawsuit.

California students are the victims of broken budget promises and a broken school funding system. I applaud this effort to align appropriate funding for our public education with our goal of educating students to master our rigorous academic standards. Budget discussions about schools in California have for too long been a one-sided conversation about how to stretch dwindling resources. This lawsuit now forces a conversation we must have about actually meeting the needs of our students. 

... A well educated population is the key to California’s successful future. We urgently need to prioritize this responsibility to our students and future generations. If the political will to protect our future is faltering, perhaps this lawsuit and the courts will be the catalyst to meet our obligation to the more than six million students in our state.

The Robles-Wong suit is the latest in a wave of challenges to educational cutbacks authored by the Schwarzenegger administration. A recent survey of public opinion found that 62 percent of Californians believed spending on education was insufficient. Despite massive job loss and teachers layoffs due to budget shortfall, last week's proposed K-12 budget for 2010-2011 had $888,729 less than the one proposed by the governor in January.

In March, federal officials opened an inquiry into the accounting practices of the governor's office after several educational groups charged the state with manipulating the books to mask a lack of spending.