State Supreme Court hears funding case

A school-funding case spanning more than 11 years made its second appearance in the state Supreme Court in Hartford on Thursday.

Oral arguments before Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers and six other justices focused largely on whether Connecticut is spending enough money to provide adequate education as the state constitution requires, and if not, on how far can the court go to intercede.

A lower court last year did not find fault with the overall level of state funding on education but called its distribution unconstitutional. The state Superior Court judge gave the state 180 days to improve the system in a number of areas, including establishing graduation standards and creating a separate funding stream for special education.

The court could take a year or more to decide the case.

In a session that lasted nearly 2 1⁄2 hours Thursday, Associate Attorney General Joseph Rubin, representing the state, told justices the trial court got it half right. He urged the high court to remand the case to the lower court for dismissal.

Rubin argued Connecticut schools are adequately funded by any reasonable standard. The state helps its neediest districts with hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

“Overall, by any legal standard that could apply the funding is rational,” Rubin said, adding it is not the court’s job to “pull out education policies one by one” and tell state it can do a better job.

As he did during the state Superior Court trial, Rubin said no direct correlation has been drawn between spending and student achievement.

Justice Richard N. Palmer, citing the high percentage of students in Bridgeport and other urban districts who do not graduate ready for college, asked Rubin if the court should ignore these disturbing statistics.

Question of rationality

Rubin agreed the numbers were troubling, but said it is up to the Legislature to fix that problem. Rogers asked Rubin if he was equating adequate funding with rationality?

Rationality is a standard set by the trial court, Rubin said.

The chief justice said while the lower court judge ruled funding was minimally adequate, the judge cited examples of districts in which that appears not to have been the case.

Attorney Joseph Moodhe, representing the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, argued state Superior Court Judge Thomas G. Moukawsher did all but deem the funding system inadequate.

“What the court was saying was that funding is not rational,” Moodhe said. He said the state needs to come up with a system in which funding gets to the district that need it most.

Moodhe said Bridgeport has too few teachers. As a result, class sizes swell, making them too large for quality education.

“Districts have to make choices when there is not enough funding,” he said.

Asked about the state’s duties in relation to poverty, Moodhe said schools have an obligation to educate all children, with sensitivity to their backgrounds.

“(But) where should the funding go ... and who am I to say, as opposed to (the) Legislature?” Rogers asked Moode. “How can we get into those determinations and, frankly, do a good job?”

Still no state budget

The case was brought by a broad group of school districts, parents and advocacy groups in 2005. Bridgeport and Danbury were two of the districts used as examples of what the group sees as victims of an unfair state funding system.

The plight of Bridgeport, in particular, was brought up on a number of times Thursday, as both sides were questioned by the justices. The financial situation in Bridgeport is such that aides have been pulled from kindergarten classrooms and teaching vacancies beyond December to be filled by substitutes to save money.

Thursday’s arguments were waged across the street from the state Capitol, where Gov. Dannel P. Malloy vetoed a Republican budget on Thursday. The state is without a budget in a fiscal year that will be one-quarter finished this weekend.

Moodhe said he hopes the budget crisis has no impact on the school-funding case. Education, he said, is a right that should not be dependent on economics.

“Our position is that the poorer districts do not have enough resources,” Moodhe said. Legislators, he added, should be told to do their jobs.