Question

1) What was the 1971 Serrano v. Priest California Supreme Court decision? What method of financing local public schools did it rule to be unconstitutional?

2) Historically the operation and financing of public schools has been left up to states and local governments. What are the benefits of allowing local communities to finance and operate their own schools? What are the benefits that come from a fully centralized system in which the federal government operates and finances all schools (such as in France)?

Answer 1

1) Serrano v. Priest was a 1971 three-part landmark California Supreme Court case in which the Supreme Court overturned a trial court’s decision and ruled that “[although] the right to an education in our public schools is a fundamental interest which cannot be conditioned on wealth, we can discern no compelling state purpose necessitating the present method of financing, [therefore] such a system [is unconstitutional]” (Serrano v. Priest, 1971). The California Supreme Court found the current California financial system of using property taxes as the principal source of revenue for public schools in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and similar provisions of the California Constitution. They supported their decision with the idea of education being “the lifeline of both the individual and society” (Karst, 1972).

Financing California’s Public Schools: Serrano v. Priest, 5 Cal. 3d 584

Serrano v. Priest originated in the Los Angeles County Superior Court as a class action suit between John Serrano, who represented public school children and their parents in the county, and Ivy Baker Priest, California’s state treasurer. It was for “declaratory and injunctive relief against certain state and county officials charged with administering the financing of the California public school system” (Serrano v. Priest, 1971). Before Serrano, “over 90% of California’s public school funding derived from a combination of school district property taxes (55.7%) and state aid based largely on sales or income taxation (35.5%)” (Serrano. 5 Cal. 3d at 591 n.2, 487 P.2d at 1246 n.2, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 606 n.2). During the case, the plaintiffs used comparisons of financial expenditures across districts to reveal the inadequacy of state grants, which were distributed based on the number of students in a district irrespective of a district’s wealth. In addition, these comparisons were used to address the fact that some students had to pay a higher tax rate in order to receive equivalent or lesser educational opportunities that were easily and readily available to students in other districts. They cited the fact that “the Baldwin Park Unified School District expended only $577.49 to educate each of its pupils in 1968-1969 [in comparison to] the Pasadena Unified School District’s $840.19 and the Beverly Hills Unified School District’s $1,231.72” (Cal. Dept. of Ed., Cal. Public Schools, Selected Statistics 1968-1969 Table IV-11). This served as one of many examples that highlighted the historically socioeconomic division in California regions and the flaws of the current financial system.

Commentary on the decision of Serrano v. Priest was present and in high volume. While it was before the trial court, a “closely-divided United States Supreme Court responded negatively to Serrano’s appreciation of federal constitutional law” (Karst, 1972, p. 333). Nonetheless, the press’ comments were affirmative and deemed the Serrano decision “as a significant, if not the significant step in the struggle for better education in urban areas” (Goldstein, 1972, p. 504). The New York Times in 1972 declared that the decision was “the most far-reaching court ruling on schooling since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954…” (Karst, 1972). Parents of school children, as taxpayers especially, supported the decision.

2) a) There are several founding sources which helps in funding the schools that are as follows

a)Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

b)Corporation for National & Community Service

c)National Endowment for the Arts. ...

d)National Science Foundation. ...

e)Office of National Drug Control Policy. ...

f)U.S. Agency for International Development

g) U.S. Department of Agriculture

h) U.S. Department of Commerce.

Community programs for youth have been a national concern at least episodically since the New Deal, when the National Youth Administration was a significant star in the constellation of agencies formed to confront the ravages of the Great Depression. The New Frontier and the Great Society featured a renewed interest in the subject, as part of the 1960s War on Poverty, through such programs as the Neighborhood Youth Corps, Upward Bound, and VISTA.After-school programs” has become the current operative language among federal, state, and local policy makers and foundations. The new federally funded programs that began appearing about 1997 are based largely in schools, staffed by school-hired personnel, and dedicated heavily to helping improve children’s academic performance. Most of the new funding is supporting programs in elementary schools, with some in middle schools. Almost none of the new focus is at the high school level, although there was also a new, smaller infusion of funding for community programs to assist lower-income youth in gaining entry to the labor market. The new government funding was accompanied by some increased support from foundations, both national and local, for infrastructure to assist with staff development, research, and evaluation, in addition to program activities. Some of the foundation initiatives reflected a more three-dimensional emphasis around the family, schools, and community on youth development that the latest government efforts have lacked.Although the recent surge of interest in out-of-school activities is gratifying, it is still limited in scope. While a series of national policies on youth development, including get-tough criminal justice policies related to youthful offenders, exist in disjointed form, there is as yet no broad, positive national policy for youth development. Even the new funding, substantial as it is, is modest compared with the number of children who need assistance (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000a). If there is one barrier above all others to an ample supply of high-quality community programs for children whose parents cannot afford to pay for them, it is the lack of reliable, stable funding streams to support them. It seems that parents are still the major funders of after-school programs, which means that many children, particularly those in lower-income families, are not served. The lack of consistent and sufficient funding leads to other barriers: untrained staff, low pay, high turnover, and inadequate facilities.

b) In order to address the issue of equal educational opportunity, it is important to understand the problems and possibilities behind America’s school financing system – in particular, the role that the federal government has played in the past and can play in the future with respect to education funding. To that end, this working paper proceeds in two parts. The first part describes the system of school finance in the United States, examining our three-tiered structure of financing, the role of money in student achievement, and the history and results of 40 years of litigation to produce equity and adequacy in school finance. The second part presents five recommendations for restructuring the use of federal education dollars to improve equity and increase adequacy

The underlying premise of these recommendations is that so long as the federal government is spending in the education arena, it should use that spending to promote equity and adequacy insofar as it can, especially since only the federal government can ensure equity and adequacy on a national level. The last two recommendations additionally call for increased federal spending on the theory that it is appropriate for the federal government to take on a greater share of education financing in this time of increased federal expectations of state and local education systems.