DENVER – The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Colorado’s school-funding system is constitutional, siding with the state in a landmark lawsuit filed by parents and school districts challenging the way schools are funded.
The 4-2 ruling affirmed the state’s argument that it has made funding a priority and that school finance should be left to lawmakers to decide, not the courts.
The 67 plaintiffs – including parents, students and 21 school districts – argued the state’s funding formula is irrational and leaves poorer students disadvantaged.
Writing for the majority, Justice Nancy Rice concluded the constitution “does not demand absolute equality in the state’s provision of education services, supplies or expenditures.”
Later in the ruling, the justices wrote that while some schools may need more funding, the state framework for funding education isn’t to blame.
“While we sympathize with the plaintiffs and recognize that the public school financing system might not provide an optimal amount of money to the public schools, the statutory public school financing system itself is constitutional,” the justices concluded.
One of the justices, Justice Monica Marquez, did not participate in the case because she previously worked on the Lobato case while a member of the attorney general’s staff.
A district judge ruled last year the educational funding system is inadequate and no district is sufficiently funded.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs listed several examples of schools they said are sorely in need of funding, such as a school building in Sanford, in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, that until recently had a partially collapsed and leaking roof and inadequate lighting. Other schools had globes on which the Soviet Union still existed, and books where Bill Clinton still was president, the attorneys said.
State officials, including Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, argued school funding already makes up nearly half the general fund budget. They said the state can’t afford more without cutting other services and departments.
Asked about the ruling Tuesday, Hickenlooper praised the decision but said schools indeed are underfunded. Last week, he signed into law a school-funding overhaul that counts on voters approving about $1 billion a year in new taxes.
“That we are in compliance with the requirements of the constitution doesn’t necessarily say that we have sufficient financing in education right now,” Hickenlooper said. “I think most people would agree we are underfunded in education.”
Republican state Rep. Carole Murray of Castle Rock said lawmakers already are looking for ways to improve school quality.
“But we must balance this need with our other funding obligations,” Murray said in a statement.
Although plaintiffs did not ask for a monetary amount in the lawsuit, they have estimated state schools are underfunded by $4 billion. That’s about half the entire general fund budget.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said they wanted the state’s current system to be declared unconstitutional and for Colorado officials to implement a formula that ensures money is used where it is needed most.
Two justices wrote dissents, including Chief Justice Michael Bender.
“The record reveals an education system so crippled by underfunding and so marked by gross disparities among districts that access to educational opportunities is determined not by a student’s interests or abilities but by where he or she happens to live,” Bender wrote.
A few national advocates for education who monitored the Colorado lawsuit agreed with Bender. In a statement released after the decision, the head of the Washington-based Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund called the decision “timorous.”
Thomas A. Saenz said the Colorado decision is “abandoning the state to a dim future of inadequately educated citizenry.”
State officials say Colorado has more than doubled spending on public education since 1994, and more than 40 percent of the budget now goes to education, a sharp contrast to 1939, when local property taxes made up about 95 percent of school funding.
Wyoming and Missouri are other states that have been sued because of school funding. Colorado attorneys argued that simply increasing funding to education won’t improve results.
The decision inadvertently was uploaded to a state server Monday, the usual day for judicial ruling releases. State officials removed the posting after a Denver Fox affiliate reported the decision, said Jon Sarche, spokesman for the state court administrator’s office. It was officially released Tuesday, a day late because of the Memorial Day holiday.
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