A spot-on decision

LITTLE ROCK — SILLY TAXPAYER and school patron. Here you thought the state provided a minimal level of funding for education as a floor. Who knew so many thought it was supposed to be a ceiling?

Last week, and probably for some time to come, the papers have been full of stories about a 4-to-3 decision out of the state’s Supreme Court. The court said-just barely-that the money school districts raise could be used to benefit students in those districts. What a concept!

The state of Arkansas has been having problems funding public education since memory runneth not to the contrary. Back in 2003, the state required each school district to collect a minimum 25-mill property tax. The money is collected locally, then forwarded to the state so the educrats in Little Rock can then send it back to the 200 or so school districts in Arkansas according to a set formula.

That formula is supposed to guarantee a certain amount of money per student. The amount, which is about $6,000 a year these days, is what the experts say it takes to give students an adequate education-at a minimum.

Happily, an opportunity to obtain such an education is guaranteed by our enlightened state constitution and laws-but that right had been ignored all too long. It was a great day when the Arkansas Supreme Court decided the constitution meant what it said about providing a “general, suitable and efficient” system of public education in this state.

Thanks to that formula for financing the schools, “rich” districts-those with lots of property to tax-can do their part to educate kids in “poor” districts. In non-legal parlance, it’s called paying your fair share.

The money from that 25-mill tax usually isn’t enough to educate a child, so the state makes up the difference from its coffers. Uh, most of the time.

But in some districts, the revenue from that minimal 25-mill tax turns out to be greater than the required $6,000 per student. Or $6,144. Or $6,267. (The number changes every year.) For good example, the Fountain Lake school district near Hot Springs raised the equivalent of $7,160 per pupil last school year. Eureka Springs raised about $100 per student more than that. And there are a few other school districts fortunate enough to have property values high enough to collect more revenue for the schools than they are legally required to raise.

Query! As eager law school students shout when they have a question about some precedent-setting decision. The question in this case: What should be done with the tax money that a handful of school districts collect over and above the mandated minimum per student?

The state has a simple answer: It wants that money. Now. To use as it sees fit-maybe not even on education.

If the state’s position, not to mention that of the three dissenting justices on Arkansas’ top court, confounds you, that’s understandable.

There is much to be confounded by.

THE STATE must provide a minimal level of education for every child, whether that child lives in, say, Eureka Springs or the Delta. Which is a good thing, and most of us can grasp that simple, elementary, fair principle. What’s more, the state is doing just that. See the revenue from that 25-mill tax each school district sends the state to be spread around. See the extra money the state sends to poorer districts to get them up to the $6,000-plus level for each student each year.

But telling a school district with high property values that it can’t keep all the revenue it raises from that 25-mill tax surpasses understanding. Why not? It’s their taxpayers’ money.

The only answer to that question these great thinkers in the educational bureaucracy have come up with is: This way, we can level the playing field and make sure all school districts are equal. Maybe equally poor, but equal!

This “solution” makes about as much sense as putting weights and chains on the best basketball players to ensure the game is fair. It’s also a great way to rule out excellence, whether in sports or public education.

No, we’re not talking about a whole lot of money here by the gluttonous standards of government spending. The state of Arkansas spends billions every year on public education, and these few exceptional school districts are only asking to keep a couple million or so of their own money altogether. Is all this fuss just a teapot-sized tempest?

Sure. Except for the principle of the thing. For if School District A is sending the required thousands of dollars to the state to spread around to other districts, but finds itself with a few dollars leftover that could be used for a new gym or a first-class chem lab, then why not? Whom does it hurt, except maybe those et up with class envy? The kind of folks who don’t seem so much interested in helping the poor as punishing the rich, including these “rich” school districts.

And think about the precedent this could set if a school district isn’t allowed to keep all the revenue it’s collected from its own taxpayers. Can you imagine what the civic-minded leaders of that community will say the next time a new high school is needed?

Yes, we know that the state has taken a lot of our tax money and given it to other school districts all across Arkansas over the years, but now we need to raise your taxes again to pay for some buildings. Hope you don’t mind.

You might get the feeling the locals would indeed mind.

IT’S NOT hard to understand why state officials want the money. Money is power, and the middle man never likes to be left out when any goodies are being distributed.

As for why a justice like the Hon. Robert Brown, one of the distinguished dissenters in this decision, would bridle at the very thought that some school districts might be allowed to keep their own tax revenues above the state mandated amount, we can’t think of a good reason for his dissent in this case-or its tone. Mr. Justice Brown played a pivotal role in the historic Lake View decision that set a minimal level of funding for every school district in Arkansas. He wrote an eminently right decision-back then. Can he be letting his pride of authorship in that earlier ruling get in the way of his disinterested judgment now? A little less temper and a lot more judicial temperament would better become the good Justice Brown.

It was also hard to understand-for just a minute-why the president of the Arkansas Education Association would say letting school districts keep more of their own tax money to improve their own schools is somehow a threat to an adequate education for all of Arkansas’ kids. There’s nothing in this latest decision that deprives other school districts around the state of any of the state funds they’re now drawing.

Even if the state got to keep the revenue above the required minimum that is thought necessary to finance an adequate education in these few school districts, why would that have any effect on the amount guaranteed other school districts? Those districts wouldn’t lose a penny if fortunate districts like Fountain Lake or Eureka Springs got to keep some more of their own tax money. The state would just have more money to spend on anything it wanted to. What is this the apparatchiks at ADE have come up with-some new dog-in-the-manger theory of public school finance?

If traditional public schools are going to compete with charters and the best of parochial and private schools, we’ll never assure that result if we tell the citizens and patrons of a school district they may not provide a more than minimal education for their kids. You’d think teachers would understand as much. But we forgot: The interests of teachers are scarcely the same as those of teachers’ unions, which have their own ideological fixations to pursue and their own appetite for power to fulfill.