American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama
Alabama Coalition for Equity
Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program
Plaintiffs respond to brief in education rights case
Summer 2001
Plaintiffs in the education adequacy and equity case today filed a motion with the Alabama Supreme Court urging the court to strike arguments made by other parties in the litigation and by state colleges and universities in pleadings filed with the court on July 27 and 28. The arguments plaintiffs have asked the court to strike are improper as they violate the directive issued by the court in its order of June 29, 2001.
On June 29, the court, acting on its own, issued an order in ACE v. Siegelman, the education adequacy and equity case. The order instructed parties in the case to address one issue: whether the Liability Order in the case was a final appealable order. The court issued this order even though ACE v. Siegelman was not pending before the court, the Liability Order in the case became final years ago and the court has said so itself on four occasions.
The Liability Order was issued by Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Eugene Reese on March 31, 1993. It was certified as a final judgment in 1993. No appeal was filed within the time provided for by law. The State Supreme Court has directly addressed the finality of the Liability Order on four separate occasions, twice in 1995 and twice in 1997. In three published opinions and one unpublished opinion, the court held that the order became final and appealable in 1993, and was not appealed in a timely manner.
Attorney General Bill Pryor, in responding to the court’s order on behalf of the governor and state school board, has agreed with plaintiffs that the court has already decided the question of finality and that the court should not now revisit that question. None of these defendants in the case are asking the court to revisit this long-decided matter. Sadly and because they apparently view their own needs as in competition with those of public school children, higher education institutions have sought to intervene for the purpose of urging the Supreme Court to deny school children the right to an adequate public school education. Where not one defendant, however, has asked the court to alter its four prior rulings holding that it is too late to appeal the Liability Order, only the most dramatic form of judicial activism, a philosophy (at least) publicly disdained by almost all members of the court, could result in the court’s reversing its own long standing precedent.
In their response to the court, defendants violated the court’s June 29 directive by addressing issues other than the finality of the Liability Order. Defendants asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the courts do not have the power to remedy the constitutional violations by the state identified in the Liability Order. Should the court reject this specious argument, the defendants have asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the state has fixed the woeful inadequacies and inequities of the education system identified in the case.
The Alabama Coalition for Equity, the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program and the ACLU, on behalf of a coalition of local school systems and children who do not receive an adequate education in Alabama, have asked the court to strike arguments made to the court other than those that directly respond to the court’s June 29 order.
The efforts of the governor, attorney general and state school board to have ACE v. Siegelman dismissed should be deeply troubling to all Alabamians. Alabama’s schools do not meet constitutional muster, as the information below makes clear. Alabama’s citizens and schoolchildren have long looked to the executive and legislative branches of Alabama government for solutions to the education crisis in this state, and though there have been modest improvements to some parts of the system, they have been too little, and for generations of children, too late. Our children have the right to look to the courts for relief. Alabama’s courts have the power, duty and the obligation to provide that relief.
Plaintiffs returned to circuit court this spring to seek a resolution to the case, which was filed 11 years ago. The state school board is currently developing its plan to present to Judge Sally Greenhaw by Oct. 15th of this year. It is imperative that this lawsuit goes forward so that Alabama schoolchildren may at last have a remedy for the constitutional deprivations they have suffered for so long.
Alabama schools do not meet constitutional standards
-- Test scores are abysmal:
SAT-9 scores are lauded in Alabama, but the SAT-9, a norm-referenced test (NRT), is not a valid measurement of student achievement. NRTs do not measure the mastery of the knowledge that students need to do well in college, qualify for good jobs or be active and informed citizens.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a criterion referenced test (CRT), is a more accurate measure of student achievement. CRTs measure how well a student has learned a specific body of knowledge and skills.
Alabama’s performance scores on nationally recognized criterion-referenced achievement tests are among the lowest in the country:
2000 NAEP mathematics results:
4th Grade Mathematics Exam: Alabama ranked 33rd out of 40
8th Grade Mathematics Exam: Alabama ranked 34th out of 39
1998 NAEP reading results:
4th Grade Reading Exam: Alabama ranked 28th out of 39
8th Grade Reading Exam: Alabama ranked 33rd out of 36
1998 NAEP writing results:
8th Grade Writing Exam: Alabama ranked 28th out of 35
1996 NAEP science results:
8th Grade Science Exam: Alabama ranked 36th out of 40
-- Funding does not meet the needs and is not distributed fairly:
For FY 1999-00, Alabama spent on average $4,946 per pupil enrollment. Among southeastern states, the average spending per pupil for FY 1999-00 was $6114, ranking Alabama 15th out of 16 states. Nationally, the average spending per pupil for FY 1999-00 was $6,627, according to “Ranking of the States 2000 and Estimates of School Statistics 2001,” a National Education Association publication.
-- Key education leaders admitted under oath in a Feb. 14, 2001, court proceeding that education funding in the state is still inequitable:
● “By any stretch of the definition of adequacy, … we’ve not made the financial commitment necessary to meet just what’s on the books and what we’re supposed to do.” -- Dr. Ed Richardson, state superintendent of education
● “I don’t consider everyone to be equitably funded. No, I don’t.” -- Robert L. Morton, Assistant State Superintendent for Administration and Finance
-- Tremendous funding disparities continue to exist among school systems:
The system with the most funds available per pupil in 1998-99, Mountain Brook, spent $7,119.33 per pupil. By contrast, the system with the least funds available per pupil, Madison City, had just 62 percent of that amount ($4,417.36).
-- Proration has exacerbated an already dismal situation for many schools:
Approximately two out of every five school systems will have to borrow money just to make it through the school year.
Due to proration, class sizes will increase and many schools will have to further delay much-needed repairs and the purchase of up-to-date textbooks and other necessary school supplies.
-- Many Alabama schools are not accredited:
Approximately one third of Alabama’s public schools remain unaccredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
-- Too few students have access to upper-level courses. According to Education Week Quality Counts 2001 Report Card:
Only 38 percent of Alabama high schools offered Advanced Placement courses (2000).
Only 27 percent of Alabama students actually took an upper-level mathematics course (1998).
Only 19 percent of Alabama students actually took an upper-level science course (1998).
-- School systems lack funds for basic facility repairs, school supplies and programs:
According to a 2000 report by the National Education Association, “Modernizing Our Schools: What Will It Cost?” the total amount of funds needed to modernize Alabama schools is $2,310,853,117. Of that sum, $1,519,210,061 is the amount it would cost to modernize school infrastructure, with the additional $791,643,056 to go toward modernizing education technology.
Butler Elementary School in Choctaw County had 12 portable classroom units this past school year, all more than 30 years old, whose deficiencies include “rain-damaged floors and “huge holes” in the roof. One portable unit serves as the school’s “gym,” and children play basketball on dirt. The permanent facilities are similarly lacking, with books stacked in boxes because of a lack of shelves in the building, parts of which date back to 1937.” -- Robin DeMonia, “Run-Down Choctaw School Finds ‘Angel,’” Birmingham News, March 19, 2001.
Students at Dallas County Elementary School hold raffles, not to fund class trips or other “extras,” but simply to pay for “paper towels, floor wax and other much needed janitorial supplies.” -- Karen Tolkkinen, “‘Equity’ Case Looms Over State,” Mobile Register, April 1, 2001.
Jack Dasis, whose daughter Andrea Dasis testified in 1993 about the poor conditions in the Choctaw County School System, told the Mobile Register that the Choctaw County schools remain in poor physical condition, and “their roofs still leak.” -- Karen Tolkkinen, “‘Equity’ Case Looms Over State,” Mobile Register, April 1, 2001.
The National Association of School Nurses recommends one nurse for every 750 children. In Alabama, there is one nurse for every 11,500 children – less than 7 percent of the recommended ratio – and the number of students per nurse is rising despite a 1998 bill enacted to reduce the ratio. -- “School Medicine Feels Proration Pain,” Montgomery Advertiser, May 21, 2001.
In Mountain Brook, the school board has been able to furnish one computer for every four students and readily available Internet access. By contrast, Dallas County’s Brantley Elementary School has no Internet access, and just one computer per seven students in grades k-3 and one per 10 in grades 4-6. -- Karen Tolkkinen, “‘Equity’ Case Looms Over State,” Mobile Register, April 1, 2001.
Given that sad state of public school education in Alabama, and considering the desperate need that our state has for quality education, it seems particularly inappropriate, and even bizarre, for the Alabama Supreme Court, without any party’s having asked it to do so, to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide to review its own decision reached on four separate occasions.
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