From Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)
to
Molly Hootch vs. Alaska State-Operated School System
to
Kasayulie vs. State of Alaska (1999)
to
Moore vs. State of Alaska (2004)

A Natural Progression
September 2006

The lawsuit filed on August 9, 2004, is a natural extension of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case that struck down segregated schools half a century ago.  The litigation is also the latest in a series of school finance lawsuits that have been filed around the country over the past 50 years.   These cases have enforced and extended the bedrock principal that all children in this country are entitled to equal access to a quality education.  Almost without exception, these lawsuits have been successful. 

On the 50^th anniversary year of Brown, many Alaskan children, including, poor, special needs and minority children, still do not have equal access to an adequate education.   And all of Alaska’s children are being cheated by the systematic under-funding of our schools.  To put our own lawsuit into perspective, below is a summary of other litigation over the years

In the half century since Brown, the struggle for equal educational opportunities has continued in many states around the country, with legal action moving from federal court into state courts, where plaintiffs have usually found a sympathetic audience. 

School funding has become THE civil rights issue of our day.  The fight for educational parity has turned to money.  And much of the progress on school funding has been taking place in the courts.  Traditionally, school finance lawsuits have been filed on the following grounds:

·         Education is a fundamental right specified in the state constitution.

·         State education clauses guarantee a universal or adequate education for all.

After Brown in the mid-1950s, a second wave of school finance lawsuits developed, starting about 15 years later.  In California, New Jersey and West Virginia, educators and parents successfully overturned school finance formulas that were found to be inadequate and inequitable.

Perhaps the best known of the early adequacy cases was filed in the mid-1980s in Kentucky.  In Rose vs. Council for Better Education, 66 low-income school districts claimed that the state education finance system violated the education clause in its constitution.  Not only did the court find the school finance system unconstitutional, it also struck down the entire public education system. 

“It is crystal clear,” wrote a justice, “that the General Assembly has fallen short of its duty to enact legislation to provide for an efficient system of common schools throughout the state….” 

Meanwhile, the national movement toward standards and high stakes testing, begun in the late 1980s, has put enormous new pressures on every school and child.  Introduction of standards and accountability has also proved to be a real boost for adequacy lawsuits.  With these tests, for the first time, districts are able to put an exact definition to the term “adequate.”  In terms of accountability, “adequate” means all students achieving up to standards—no child left behind.  To the extent that this doesn’t happen, a district does not have adequate resources to accomplish its mission.  

In Campbell County School District vs. State [Wyoming, 1995], the court actually dictated the duties of the legislature to provide the opportunity to “prepare high school graduates to participate in the political system and to compete both intellectually and economically.”  Among these legislative duties were: small class sizes, ample and appropriate provisions for at-risk students, and meaningful standards and assessments. 

Campbell County ushered in a new era of adequacy litigation because it recognized that there should be a rationale behind an “adequate” level of education funding.  Two years later, in 1997, the DeRolph vs. State of Ohio decision marked another major victory for education adequacy reform.  The Ohio justices mandated a revision of the state finance formula, a reduction in the reliance on property taxes, and a requirement that the insufficiency of state funding for school buildings be addressed.  #

* Much of this historical information comes from an essay entitled “Education Finance Litigation: History, Issues, and Current Status” on the National Conference of State Legislatures web site:  http://www.ncsl.org/programs/educ/LitigationCon.htm. 
 

From Kasayulie vs. State of Alaska (1999)
to
Moore vs. State of Alaska (2004)

The Necessary Next Step

Alaska became a state in 1959, five years after the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation ruling.  And Alaska’s Constitution spells out the mandate for educating all our children:  “The legislature shall by general law establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all children of the State….”

Yet de facto discrimination against Alaska Native children continued in the same pattern as territorial days.  In most rural villages, schools stopped at the 8^th grade, and children who wanted a high school diploma had to leave their family, friends and culture.  A class action lawsuit brought in 1972 challenged the status quo.  As a result, Molly Hootch vs. Alaska State-Operated School System began a long overdue wave of new high school construction throughout the Bush.  

For a while, progress was being made.  Alaska invested a chunk of its 1969 Prudhoe Bay lease sale windfall in the education of its children. The early years of care and attention for our schools meant that the young state started earning national recognition.  Alaska’s rank in per-pupil expenditures among the states was 1^st in 1960, 2^nd in 1970, and back to 1^st in 1980 and 1986. 

Then school funding started its downward spiral.  Alaska’s economic recession of the late 1980s hit our schools hard.  But in the years since then, our economy has recovered and boomed.  Alaskans have enjoyed unparalleled wealth.  Our Permanent Fund savings account now tops $34 billion.  Yet we have not only failed to make up for the losses, we have allowed our schools to fall farther and farther behind inflation. 

Hardest hit have been the smaller school districts.  In earlier times remote districts offered premium salaries to attract bright, adventurous teachers and administrators.  No longer.  Teacher housing in most villages is non-existent or substandard. And the new village schools built in the wake of the mid-1970s Molly Hootch settlement badly need repair or replacement. 

Another lawsuit, Kasayulie vs. State of Alaska, successfully challenged the disparity between large and small districts in terms of school facilities.  The Superior Court held that Alaska’s system for funding school construction was unconstitutional under the education clause of the Alaska Constitution and also violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The court also ruled that education in Alaska is a fundamental right.

In response, the Alaska Legislature put forward a statewide school construction bond package (Proposition C on the 2002 ballot) that should begin to redress the imbalance.  But the more fundamental funding gap between large and small remains.

Moore vs. State of Alaska is the logical next step from Kasayulie and a natural progression from Brown.   While Kasayulie challenged disparities in school construction funding among districts, our case challenges the adequacy of overall school funding—the costs associated with educating children.  Our case revolves around adequacy—that the state is failing in its Constitutional obligation to “establish and maintain a system of public schools open to all students.” This failure to fund an adequate education deprives the children of Alaska of a fundamental Constitutional right and offends the deeply rooted concept that our children must receive at least an adequate, if not a superior education.