Lobato vs. Colorado: Justice or Chaos?

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by: Colorado Pols

As the Durango Herald’s Joe Hanel reports:

A group of parents and 21 school districts – including Montezuma-Cortez – is suing the state in a case called Lobato v. Colorado, claiming inadequate funding for schools. Opening arguments took most of the morning Monday.

“This case begins with the constitution and ends with children,” said Kenzo Kawanabe, who made the plaintiffs’ opening argument.

The plaintiffs are basing their case on Colorado’s constitution, which requires a “thorough and uniform” system of education and local control of schools. They claim the state is violating both principles by not paying enough for schools, even as the Legislature passes more education-reform laws that school districts must follow…

The plaintiffs aren’t asking Denver District Judge Sheila Rappaport to order the extra funding, but they do want her to tell the Legislature that its school-funding formula is unconstitutional and needs to be changed.

Schools districts already use nearly half the state’s general fund budget, so such a ruling would require either steep cuts to other departments or a tax increase.

The state is going to argue that more money will not make the schools better.

Plaintiffs argue that Colorado schools are structurally underfunded by billions–somewhere between $1.4 and $3.6 billion dollars per year. In an excellent Colorado Public Radio report yesterday fairly examining both sides of this debate, Bruce Caughey of the Colorado Association of School Executives argues that it would require a minimum of an additional $1.5 billion per year for Colorado’s public school funding to simply reach the national average.

State officials including Gov. John Hickenlooper have come out in opposition to the plaintiffs in Lobato vs. Colorado, arguing that the constitution did not provide guidance on funding levels, and that this is a job better left to the legislature and the voters–particularly, though Gov. Hickenlooper didn’t say it, since Colorado is bound by the 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to submit all tax increases to a vote.

However, one of the plaintiffs’ main arguments is the interlocking constitutional limitations and spending mandates in Colorado that have left the legislature unable to appropriate a constitutionally adequate level of funding for public schools. A combination of the Gallagher Amendment restricting property taxes and TABOR throttling the state’s ability to make up the difference, plaintiffs argue that the legislature–and every local school district in the state–has been placed in a constitutionally impermissible situation.

We’ve been talking about the Lobato case for years now as it has slowly wended its way toward trial. If they do prevail in court, and the many appeals such a victory would be sure to draw, it could dramatically shake up Colorado politics. The state could be forced to remedy the situation–maybe by neutering TABOR? Perhaps a comprehensive ballot measure or measures, with some nasty debt-ceiling style “triggers” threatening the reluctant? The possibilities!

Don’t get us wrong. We do understand and are sympathetic to the arguments made by defenders of the legislative process, and their warnings of chaos–and political fallout–from a court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in Lobato vs. Colorado. But we have to tell you, after years of watching Colorado hover at the bottom of rankings for state education funding without hope of remedy, and listening to the bleak stories of rural school districts like the one profiled in the CPR report above…a constitutional adequacy smackdown does have its allure, folks.

17 thoughts on “Lobato vs. Colorado: Justice or Chaos?”

dmindgo says:

August 2, 2011 at 7:37 pm

I don’t know any of the ins and outs on this case, but it seems that the court could rule that each district can be sued for not providing “thorough” education. The state can require the “uniform” part. Maybe there is a good argument for requiring state funding, but it seems they might have to go after each district first.

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1. RedGreen says:
  
  August 2, 2011 at 8:05 pm
  
  The lawsuit is over a provision in the state constitution that says Colorado must provide a “thorough and uniform” education. The state is the appropriate defendant in this case.
  
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sxp151 says:

August 2, 2011 at 7:46 pm

The relentless push towards the “average” in public education. Why shouldn’t we try for the extremes? And if it can’t be extremely high, why not extremely low?

Tune in, in about 28 minutes, for another “this is the problem with liberals.”

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1. ProgressiveCowgirl says:
  
  August 2, 2011 at 7:48 pm
  
  Mime! No, angry cab driver! No, MMJ advocate! Um… cranky right to worker! Corporate fatcat!
  
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2. Gray in Mountains says:
  
  August 2, 2011 at 7:49 pm
  
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  1. Gray in Mountains says:
    
    August 2, 2011 at 7:50 pm
    
    we beat them in health care and we can beat them in edumication too
    
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    1. BlueCat says:
      
      August 2, 2011 at 9:17 pm
      
      with charmingly uneducated natives, a tiny elite eductated in UK and shaky infrastructure. We can just do staycations in our very own. That ought to boost the economy, right?
      
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  2. ajb says:
    
    August 2, 2011 at 7:52 pm
    
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DavidThi808 says:

August 2, 2011 at 10:10 pm

The constitution requires a uniform education but also requires local control. How do you get both? To provide a uniform system requires state level control.

As to thourough, that doesn’t necessarily mean good, it just means they run the students through a million facts. So how does that require any additional funding?

I also would like to see our school system fixed but I don’t see how this would do so. Even if it forced additional funding, that won’t improve things – the major problems are systemic not financial.

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1. MADCO says:
  
  August 3, 2011 at 5:37 am
  
  and a hundred other things that aren’t funded.
  
  Beyond that, Douglas County don’t need no stinkin’ facts. They just need the money form the State budget to fund private schools.
  
  The local control comes through school boards and the administrative hierarchy they lead.
  
  The uniform part comes from the the state setting standards that the local boards must meet.i Is it ideal – no. Is it uniform – no. Is it “thorough” – whatinhell does that even mean?
  
  I’ve been in elementary schools with no computers for the students and only a few more for the faculty. But I’ve been in elementary schools where the student to pc ratio is less than 6:1 (and I’m talking Colorado, not Wyoming where it’s 1:1)
  
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2. sxp151 says:
  
  August 3, 2011 at 5:46 am
  
  Plenty of liberal morons can get As in public school just for showing up and hating Jesus, but private schools are so demanding that even a genius and future President can work his butt off and just end up with Cs.
  
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  1. Tom says:
    
    August 3, 2011 at 5:58 am
    
    bringing up Bush’s years at Andover is playing dirty pool.
    
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    1. sxp151 says:
      
      August 3, 2011 at 6:09 am
      
      is what liberals do to earn money when they realize their MFAs in comparative Soviet poetry won’t get them a real job working for a job creator. I want no part of it, thanks.
      
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      1. ajb says:
        
        August 4, 2011 at 8:50 pm
        
        Cleaning dirty pools?
        
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Automaticftp says:

August 2, 2011 at 10:22 pm

Unlikely to ultimately prevail. They might win at trial, but the the plaintiffs are very unlikely to win on appeal.

The main reason that I see is that the question of what is the appropriate level of funding for K-12 is a legislative question, and the appellate courts will be loathe to substitute their judgment as to what “adequated funding levels” are for that of the legislature.

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1. Littletonian says:
  
  August 3, 2011 at 4:45 pm
  
  only insofar as the legislated outcome results in a uniform level of education across the state. If it does not, then it becomes a constitutional problem to be resolved by the courts.
  
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2. ohwilleke says:
  
  August 5, 2011 at 8:45 pm
  
  Plaintiff wins — there have probably been at least a dozen nationwide — but have left Plaintiffs with decades long tasks of enforcing their wins. What usually happens is that judges enter a judgment finding that the state has broken the law, are affirmed on appeal, enter an injunction demanding that the state comply with the requirement and refuse to impose any specific way to go about doing that until the state has had many more years to work out a solution – only imposing a solution after years of being ignored – quite a bit like the California prison underfunding litigation that is on the verge of being implemented.
  
  Quite frankly, a big part fo the problem is that the budget is overconstrained by multiple state constitutional requirements and if a judge could come in and cut the Gordian knot for them in ways that they probably couldn’t without a court order, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
  
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