WEAC Brief Challenges Constitutionality of School Finance System

Wisconsin's school aid formula fails to protect the fundamental right to equal educational opportunity and should be declared unconstitutional, WEAC lawyers said in a brief filed Friday (August 20, 1999) with the State Supreme Court.

WEAC briefs and supporting documents are prepared for delivery

WEAC Associate Counsel Marilyn
Windschiegl prepares WEAC legal briefs
and supporting documents for delivery
to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Inequities have been exacerbated by the 1993 law that imposed revenue controls on school districts, according to the brief.

The brief and a wagonful of supporting documents were submitted in support of a lawsuit WEAC filed in 1996. WEAC intervened in a lawsuit in which more than 100 school districts, parents and students challenged the constitutionality of Wisconsin's school funding system. That lawsuit has reached the Supreme Court on appeal from lower court rulings.

The lawsuit challenges the failure of the state funding formula to address the substantially different resources of individual districts and the system's failure to recognize changing demographics and differing student needs. It claims the system violates the portion of the Wisconsin Constitution that requires schools be "as nearly uniform as practicable."

The WEAC brief states that, in denying the claim, the Circuit Court and Appeals Court relied on a 10-year-old case (Kukor v. Grover) that similarly found the system was not unconstitutional. The brief argues that the Kukor decision was wrong in the first place, but also points out that much has changed in the last 10 years. This includes the imposition of revenue controls on school districts and a "dramatic rise" in the number of high-needs students who "require substantially more funds to educate."

Also, the brief states, the state "has placed significant new demands on schools and students by imposing substantial new testing, promotion and graduation requirements" but has not appropriated any funds "to ensure that students will have an equal opportunity to meet these requirements."

In the Kukor case, WEAC attorneys argue, justices concluded that the substantial differences in spending among school districts were justified by the doctrine of local control.

"Whatever local control there was in 1989 - or, for that matter, in 1849 - largely has evaporated with the advent of strict cost controls and the host of other state and federal requirements," according to the new WEAC brief. "Today, the state's involvement in 'local' education, always substantial, has now become pervasive."

The brief explores many ways in which revenue controls are imposing financial hardships unevenly. For example, districts with large numbers of special needs students and districts with declining enrollment are being hit harder than other districts.

"To the extent 'Kukor' limits a school district's right to expend local funds, any such limitations can be justified only by the state's overriding interest in promoting equal educational opportunities," the brief states. "However, revenue limits do not achieve that goal - instead, they frustrate it. The limits apply whether the expenditures promote or inhibit equal educational opportunity, and this court should declare them unconstitutional."