‘Minimally Adequate’: S.C.’s School Funding Lawsuit

Aug. 21–Decision could send broad message on government’s role in education

S.C. educators and policy-makers are not the only ones who will be watching closely when Judge Thomas W. Cooper Jr. issues a ruling in the Palmetto State’s landmark school funding lawsuit. Groups from Alaska to Georgia will be watching, too.

Cooper is expected to issue a ruling in the lawsuit soon. Within South Carolina, the circuit judge’s ruling could go a long way toward determining the future of poor, rural school systems and altering the way the state pays for education.

But Cooper’s ruling also could have a nationwide impact. That’s because the S.C. case has become an important part of the nationwide debate about how states should pay for education.

Cooper’s decision in the case — officially called Abbeville County School District et al. v. the State of South Carolina — will be woven into that fabric of school funding lawsuits nationwide.

“If South Carolina starts to do something serious about it, that will send a signal to a lot of people that, surely, they should do the same,” said Steve Suitts, program coordinator for the Southern Education Foundation.

In Alaska, an attorney representing school districts there reaches across four time zones to call attorney Carl Epps, who represents the poor school districts that are suing the state, to consult on legal strategies.

In New York, analysts at the national clearinghouse organization for school funding lawsuits monitor the S.C. case daily for any news.

In Georgia, a group that filed a school funding lawsuit there last year hopes a favorable ruling for the poor S.C. districts could inspire negotiations before the Georgia suit reaches trial.

“If our state sees the handwriting on the wall, then maybe we can work together and come up with something to address the problem,” said Joe Martin, executive director of the Georgia consortium.

Attorneys on both sides of school funding lawsuits filed in other states will be looking to Cooper’s decision for tips on how to bolster their arguments, experts say.

“It’s so encompassing that almost any other state’s issue would nest within it,” said James Guthrie, an education professor at Vanderbilt University who testified as a defense witness.

The same isn’t true of every state, however.

South Carolina is unique because its educational guarantee in the state’s constitution — of a “minimally adequate education” — is some of the broadest found in any state.

In addition, Cooper allowed 101 days of testimony. Few cases across the country have devoted that kind of time; many have been limited to a few weeks.

“There is nothing we know better, or more, than what was put forth in the Abbeville case,” said Vanderbilt’s Guthrie, who has testified in more than 20 such trials across the country. “It’s the most complete, the widest coverage of all the relevant issues that has ever taken place.”

Already, exhibits from the case are being used to teach education policy courses at some of the nation’s top universities, he said.

While the language between state constitutions varies, the principles are the same.

“The issues raised in the South Carolina case are national issues,” said Molly A. Hunter, director of the New York-based ACCESS Network, a nonprofit organization that tracks school funding issues. “They’re pertinent in other states, therefore people in other states are very interested in the decisions in other states.”

The S.C. case is not simply a lawsuit, Hunter said. It is part of a national movement toward what advocates call a “quality education” for all students.

“We want to know as soon as (the decision) comes out,” she said. “We want to get our hands on it right away.”

The focus on South Carolina comes, in part, from the state’s place in civil rights history.

Briggs v. Elliott, which became an integral part of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case in 1954, was filed in Clarendon County, the same county where the latest phase of the Abbeville case was tried.

“The nation watches certain cases because of the historic nature,” said Julie Underwood, a lawyer with the National School Boards Association.

“The Montana Supreme Court ruled for adequacy this summer,” she said. “Not too many national headlines there. But there will be from South Carolina.”

Historically, the South has been viewed as lagging behind the rest of the nation on education spending, Suitts said.

“The South was then, as it is now, behind,” Suitts said. “We still are used as the measurement of what the folks at the bottom are doing. If Southern states do move forward, that does spur other states to think, ‘Oh, my, we’re not going to be behind that state.’”

If the decision favors the suing school districts?

“It would be just part of the growing trend and would certainly bolster South Carolina’s image nationally, as a state that’s willing to bite the bullet and move the state forward,” Epps said.

If Cooper rules in favor of the state?

“Some courts may take that as a message that they’re free to do the same thing, that they have no role to play in education,” Epps said.

Either way, “the nation is watching.”

And, either way, the case will be appealed to the state Supreme Court, attorneys for both sides and Cooper readily agree.

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