Alabama Supreme Court Backs Away from Enforcing School Finance Improvements -- Rural Policy Matters, Volume 4, Number 7 (July 2002)

In the ongoing battle to improve funding for rural schools across the nation, tension is often created between the courts that have found school finance systems to be constitutionally lacking, and the state legislatures that have the ultimate power to fund education. The latest example of this tension comes from Alabama where the state Supreme Court recently ruled that Alabama's legislators and the Governor, not its judges, are responsible for determining the best way to fund public education.

In a 7-1 decision, the Alabama high court ruled that courts should not be involved in decisions about how to adequately and fairly fund all of the state's school systems. Those decisions are the province of the legislative and executive branches of government, the court ruled. But while declining to direct the state legislature and Governor to take action to remedy the state's school funding program, the Supreme Court left standing a lower court ruling that the Alabama funding system did not meet the requirements of the state constitution.

The decision comes as a setback to the 35 poor and largely rural school districts that filed the original lawsuit in an effort to have the courts intervene to increase funding from the state. Rural school leaders in Alabama said that the ruling would make it harder to ensure that that children in poor and largely rural districts would be put on equal financial footing with students in wealthy districts with healthy tax bases.

Within Alabama, the disparities in funding between school systems are startling. Students in prosperous areas of the state receive local funding equal to $5,175 per student per year. In contrast, students attending low wealth schools receive local funding equal to $300 per student per year.

The battle for equitable and adequate funding for schools in Alabama now shifts to the state legislature. The State Department of Education has proposed a bold education funding plan that would channel over $1.7 billion dollars into the state's public schools. The plan would be phased in over five years and would put much of the burden on local governments to raise the new money. It also would also create a pool of money available to poor school districts unable to raise sufficient funding on their own. With the court's ruling to stay out of the fray over funding, schools and students will, no doubt, face an uphill battle in selling this proposal to legislators.

The decision in Alabama underscores the need for rural advocates to always build political support for their cause even as they fight for reform in the courts. Courts can, and often do, play an important role in the battle for equitable and adequate funding for education. But in the end, the legislature and Governor are generally the parties that must be pushed and convinced to appropriate the money needed to implement school finance reforms.