SCERAC Appeals Education Funding Decision-Part 1

On November 1, 2019 the St. Cloud Educational Rights Advocacy Council (SCERAC) filed its notice of appeal to the Minnesota Court of Appeals to seek a ruling on whether Minnesota's education funding system as applied to the St. Cloud District violates the mandates of  the Supreme Court's Skeen and Cruz-Guzman decisions.  This post is the first in a series, taken from the public records, describing what caused the members of SCERAC to challenge Minnesota's funding system as it applied to the St. Cloud School district.

About SCERAC

SCERAC's members consist of parents and students, black and white, native born and immigrant, as well as current and past St. Cloud school board members,  lifelong educators, and active leaders of service organizations involved in advocacy for K-12 education and students. Its board includes parents of students in the district, officers of the NAACP, St. Cloud Branch, educators and supporters of both school funding and school reform. Its members include a former superintendent, outstanding educators, and recognized community leaders in education. 

SCERAC was formed by a group of dedicated community members who have tried virtually every conceivable non-litigation tactic to convince governors and legislators to bring Minnesota's constitutional system into compliance with the Constitution as interpreted by our own Supreme Court in Skeen v. State (1993). Before commencing a litigation, SCERAC engaged in discussions with the leadership of the district -- board members and admininistration.   They wanted to make sure that any actions they took would be in support of the District's strategic objectives to close the achievement gap and to provide a robust first class education for the students that Minnesota's current system is leaving behind.

Two Decades of Constitutional Violations

In 1993, the Supreme Court held that the Minnesota Constitution mandated that the state must provide public school districts with enough funding to provide each student with an education that meets all state standards.  Moreover, the Court held that violation of that constitutional mandate was  justiciable, that is, enforceable in the courts as a fundamental right. 

Significantly, at the time that Skeen was briefed, the State of Minnesota  represented to the Supreme Court that the Minnesota legislature had decided to adopt more rigorous proficiency and outcome-based standards, so that the Court surely must have known that the financial requirements for meeting state standards was about to become more demanding, and indeed, that is exactly what happened.  In conformance with the State's representation to the Court, Minnesota began adopting a series of more demanding – and more costly – state education standards. Under the Skeen decision, the State would now have to correlate its mandatory state standards with the cost of delivering those standards, but as the state added new standards, one after the other, the state made no effort, not in the Governor's budget, nor in the legislative hearings, nor in the biennial education budget, to correlate cost and state standards.

One after another, the legislature added new and more rigorous state standards requiring more of school districts, and especially requiring more of districts serving students with higher educational needs.  Reading, math and science proficiency standards measured by standardized tests were added, and then the standards for proficiency were increased.   New demanding English language learner education standards were added and then enhanced in the so-called LEAPS Act.  Special education standards were enhanced, and as the performance standards for non-disabled students were made more rigorous, the corresponding requirements for special education's free and appropriate education were increased and made more costly.   The cost of special education skyrocketed, and the deficit in that funding also skyrocketed.    

These new mandates raised significantly the cost of delivering an education meeting state standards for all school districts:  but the mandates raised those costs at a far greater rate for districts serving demographic groups with statistically greater educational challenges -- (e.g., lower income students, English language learners, students of color and students with significant disabilities).  At first, Minneapolis and St. Paul was most strongly impacted by these new financial demands.  However, by 2000, demographic changes began to occur in St. Cloud that would increase dramatically the percentage of its enrollment of students with greater and more costly educational challenges.

2004 School Finance Task Force

In 2004, Governor Pawlenty responded to complaints from school districts that state mandates were far outpacing revenues, and especially so for students with greater educational challenges. Governor Pawlenty appointed a blue-ribbon school finance task force.  The task force report found that the state was not covering the cost of meeting state standards, but that the deficit was most pronounced for the serving students with greater educational challenges. That Task Force warned that to close the achievement gap, the state must provide the “full dollar cost” of mandated education.  Moreover, the Task Force found, the state must require local districts to use the new funding to implement programs that work.    The recommendations essentially called for the state to implement the Skeen standard, that is, to provide full funding of state mandated education requirements.

The Minnesota Department of Education made no effort to track the growing mandate funding deficit for most students with higher educational needs.  However, the State by law must track the deficit in special education funding necessary to meet state standards, and so we know exactly what that shortfall is. In 2004, the funding shortfall for special education was $321 million per year less than mandated costs.  By 2017, it had risen to $750 million per year.  In 2015 the legislature added an important new set of mandatory standards for the 15% of students with dyslexia.  Board members and educational leaders in St. Cloud were trying mightily to adjust their programs to meet state standards, not only because of the standards, but because they believed in the mission of graduating all students ready for post secondary education, for career, and for citizenship, but they were telling the community that the funding gap was growing and rendering compliance with state standards impossible.

The public education advocates who ultimately formed SCERAC responded in a variety of ways. They:

• Testified repeatedly at the legislature
• Organized operating levy campaigns, some successful and others not successful
• Formed a parent advocacy group to advocate for appropriate funding for St. Cloud and all school districts
• At the school board level passed resolutions annually urging the state to obey the constitutional mandate in Skeen
• Worked with state organizations to advocate for constitutional compliance
• Formed a non-profit foundation to raise money to help the district to keep school activities afloat in the face of funding shortfalls, to provide classroom support, to support summer reading and to provide needed support to homeless families
• Formed Partners for Student Success to coordinate community activities to supplement what the district lacked the funds to accomplish

During the terms of three Governors, however, noone in the Executive Branch made any effort to comply with the Skeen decision.   Many at the state level treated the Skeen decision as if it was a slogan to be ignored.   In the legislature and state house, the Second Amendment was treated as if a command from on high, sacrosanct.   But, the educational rights -- found by the Supreme Court to be a fundamental enforceable right, were completely ignored.  Then, in 2018, the Supreme Court issued its Cruz-Guzman decision. 

In Cruz-Guzman,  the Attorney General had told the Court that the Education Clause could not be enforced in the courts, despite the clear holding of Skeen.  She asked the court to ratify what the state had actually been doing -- to allow the executive branch and the legislative branch to treat the fundamental right as if the legislature could effectively keep on ignoring it altogether.  In a clear rebuff, the  Court's decision reminded the state that it had held in Skeen the funding requirements addressed in Skeen were enforcible.  The constitutional test for educational adequacy, the Court reminded required:

funding to each student in the state in an amount sufficient to generate an adequate level of education which meets all state standards, 

Still, in the ensuing legislative session, neither governor nor legislature, not democrats nor republicans took any steps to respect the Skeen - Cruz Guzman standard.  The activists -- parents, educators, board members and advocates, organized SCERAC to enforce their constitutional rights.  This is the first in a series of posts describing the SCERAC case and its journey through the Minnesota Court system.