St. Cloud NAACP prepares to enforce the Constitution-3

This is the third in a series on St. Cloud NAACP's impending litigation to enforce Minnesota's constitutional education clause as to the St. Cloud District for students with educational disadvantages--lower income students, students of color, students with dyslexia, immigrants/first generation and English language learner students.  When we focus on the students in these categories, of course, we are categorizing them statistically.   We cannot avoid doing that, because both federal legislation and the World's Best Workforce legislation expect us to assure that students in those statistical categories perform on the average as well as others.   There are plenty of students in these categories who are thriving educationally.   But we often refer to those students as "beating the odds."

In its recent Cruz-Guzman decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court reaffirmed that Minnesota’s constitutional education clause demands a public education system that provides an education to all children that meets state standards. The Court wrote:

We specifically stated that “there is a fundamental right, under the Education Clause, to a ‘general and uniform system of education’ which provides an adequate education to all students in Minnesota.” Id. at 315. (Cruz decision explaining Skeen)

We declared that the Education Clause “requires the state to provide enough funds to ensure that each student receives an adequate education We declared that the Education Clause “requires the state to provide enough funds to ensure that each student receives an adequate education ….an adequate level of education which meets all state standards, . “

 What is the basis for our claim that Minnesota is not providing enough funds to ensure that each student receives an adequate education... which meets all state standards?    Actually, this is a slam-dunk legal case, and it is really surprising that nobody has yet brought a case to make it.  

The case to establish Minnesota's funding failure has multiple elements, each of which is sufficient alone to demand constitutional relief.   However, the most straightforward and easiest to prove is the state's abject failure to fund the cost of providing state mandated special education.    The state keeps track of the cost of providing special education to state standards, in fact that is the only part of public education that the state carefully tracks for costing purposes.  

Statewide, the shortfall in funding special education to state standards is now at about $1.5 billion for the biennium, and it is scheduled to rise substantially over the next several years.    That deficit, however, is distributed irrationally, or should I say, distributed intentionally so that it hits more heavily on certain school districts like Minneapolis, St. Cloud and St. Paul, the very districts that can least afford it.  

The St. Cloud District must absorb a $12 million annual deficit, the difference between state mandated expenditures and total funding for those expenditures.  When the district tried to make some cuts, the state issued warnings to lower caseloads, raising those costs up again.  Then, amazingly, it penalized the district for increasing its expenditures  

On the average, state law requires St. Cloud to spend a $5,867 more for special education for a special education student than the state reimburses. The corresponding funding deficit for a special education student in the 7 neighboring district is $3,777--so the average deficit inflicted on St. Cloud is $2000 per student higher than neighboring districts, even though St. Cloud serves far more students with non disability related educational disadvantages.   Its like someone decided to pile on.   

When the St. Cloud NAACP brings a motion for relief, its going to be interesting to see whether the State has an explanation for why this funding debacle meets the constitutional standard.   If the state is being candid, it is going to have to recognize that it is not.   The funding simply does not provide funding necessary to meet state standards.  The fact that the state forces St. Cloud to cannibalize that money from other students with educational disadvantages surely is not an explanation:  it just compounds the constitutional violation.   

There is some hope in Governor Walz's inaugural address that perhaps he may actually fix this problem, although administration after administration has rationalized, avoided, and procrastinated.   In his address, he stated:

Disparities in our educational system based on geography, race, or economic status hold back not only our students, but our entire state from reaching its full potential. We must make Minnesota the “Education State” for all children—black, white, brown, and indigenous....Minnesotans, let’s recognize some simple truths: Education is the great equalizer of society. Education unleashes untapped potential. Education conjures the magic of promising beginnings and the grace of second chances. Putting a young child on a yellow bus to pre-kindergarten in St. Cloud can prevent him from riding a prison bus to Stillwater. Some of these truths are inspiring, others uncomfortable. But all lead us back to one of our core beliefs as Minnesotans—that every child deserves a high-quality education.

Such talk can be inspiring, but it can also be, as they say, cheap.   St. Cloud NAACP will seek promptly to require that the state fix this constitutional problem in the 2019-20 budget.    There will be those who suggest that somehow this problem should be put off, studied, or fixed in tiny baby steps.   But the constitution doesn't grant that leeway.    Let us hope that the state will actually "recognize this simple truth:"  the Supreme Court issued its constitutional standard in 1993, a quarter century ago.    Time to enforce the constitution.