Shelby board of education sues state for full funding
The Shelby County Board of Education is suing the state of Tennessee, alleging an unconstitutional failure to fully fund public schools.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in Davidson County. It accuses the state of withholding funds and disproportionately hurting children in impoverished areas.
The suit highlights hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts Shelby County Schools was forced to make over the last several years, leading to increased class sizes, fewer teachers, deteriorating facilities and overall poor-performing schools.
“Because of the lack of funding, the District is unable to provide many of these impoverished, mainly-minority students with an education that would allow them to achieve the outcomes mandated by the Tennessee Constitution given the high-density urban setting in which the District operates nor an education that is substantially equal to the education received by other students in the State,” the complaint reads.
State lawmakers have never fully funded the formula for public school allocations, called the Basic Education Program, or BEP. SCS leaders said previously if the district were to get what the formula says it is entitled to receive, they would get $103 million more per year.
The board is seeking a judgment that the funding level is unconstitutional, plus whatever costs SCS incurs by filing the suit, and any other relief the court deems appropriate.
The state attorney general’s office was reviewing the complaint Monday afternoon, a spokesperson said.
School board chairwoman Teresa Jones called Monday a
“pivotal day” for SCS.
“This is an unprecedented move for the district but we feel it is the right thing to do to ensure we can provide a solid, adequate, quality education for all our children,” she said.
The school board voted in May to hire legal counsel to fight the state over how it funds public education, acknowledging at the time a lawsuit was possible.
SCS is not the first district in the state to file suit over this issue. In March, Hamilton County and school boards in six smaller systems jointly sued the state. Metro Nashville and Knox County school districts have yet to get involved.
The 38-page suit is separate from the one filed in East Tennessee, SCS general counsel Valerie Speakman said, adding that the district would welcome another system like Metro Nashville latching onto the SCS suit.
Given Shelby County’s high poverty rate, she said, SCS wanted to argue its point separately. According to the suit, 84.3 percent of the district’s students were considered economically disadvantaged in the 2012-13 school year.
The firm representing SCS, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, won a similar case in Kansas, Speakman said, and won relief in addition to the judgment that the funding level was unconstitutional.
Board member Chris Caldwell said the board is “committed to seeing this through.”
“The suggestion that SCS or any school district in the state of Tennessee should accept this and should sacrifice a generation of students because the state of Tennessee has failed to fulfill its constitutional responsibility is unacceptable,” he said.
Superintendent Dorsey Hopson called the board’s decision to sue “wise,” and spoke about the effects of poverty during a news conference at Riverview School near Interstate 55 south of Downtown — a location he said he chose intentionally so as to provide a glimpse into one of the poorest ZIP codes in the country.
“What we know unequivocally is that when we have some of the suffocating poverty that we have, in order to get to some of the results we’re trying to get to, it takes resources,” he said. “And because of often times the lack of resources that we have, we’re all the time asking our school leaders and teachers to do more with less.”
While the lawsuit is expected to take years to resolve, district leaders said the time and money spent will be worth it.
“The cost of not doing it far outweighs the dollars spent in terms of attorney fees,” board chairwoman Jones said.