Schools to resume funding fight

A coalition of local school systems spent more than $2.5 million suing the state in an unsuccessful attempt to prove the government is shortchanging public school students.

The state government itself racked up even more in legal fees - $3.1 million in taxpayer money - to defend itself against the Consortium for Adequate School Funding's complaint that the state fails to allocate enough money for public education.

The consortium doesn't plan to give up, though, despite the rising expense of the suit and a state attorney general's legal opinion that it's against the law for the group to use tax revenue to sue the state.

The consortium sued in 2004 to force the state to spend enough to provide the "adequate education" the Georgia Constitution requires. About a third of Georgia's public school systems joined the lawsuit, which claimed that small, poor counties are treated unfairly because they do not raise enough money from local taxes to make up for cuts in state education spending.

The consortium, which includes four Athens-area districts, withdrew the lawsuit in September - just before trial - when a new judge was assigned to the case. Gov. Sonny Perdue immediately asked for a legal opinion, and state Attorney General Thurbert Baker last week ruled that schools can't use tax revenue to form a nonprofit to sue the state.

Perdue trumpeted Baker's finding, saying through a spokesman that the lawsuit was a waste of money.

"This is money that should be going into the classroom to educate children, not fatten the wallets of lawyers," said Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley. "Taxpayers in these local districts that signed up for the consortium were paying both sides of the bill - the plaintiffs' lawyers with their local tax dollars, as well as the defense with their state taxes. It is the wrong way to go about effecting public policy, particularly when it comes to how funds are spent in the state budget."

The consortium alleges the state's two-decades-old Quality Basic Education formula has drifted badly out of whack, so much so that state funding covers barely half of the cost of operating a public school system.

Consortium leaders contend they did all they could to get lawmakers to fix the state funding formula for education, which has not kept up with inflation and has shifted the burden of paying for schools from the state to local taxpayers.

Since the consortium formed as a nonprofit in 2001, membership has expanded to include 50 of the states' 180 school systems. Clarke, Oglethorpe and Madison county schools, as well as Commerce city schools, all have paid into the consortium.

The Clarke County School District withdrew from the consortium briefly in 2007, when the group doubled the county's dues to $90,000, but rejoined last summer under a new agreement, paying about $12,000 a year. Dues were based on student enrollment.

Madison County has paid $116,212 since joining the consortium in 2003, and Commerce has paid a total of $29,546. Oglethorpe County School System officials have paid about $350,000 into the consortium since 2001.

Commerce and two other school systems dropped out of the consortium when the group withdrew its lawsuit in September, said consortium Executive Director Joe Martin.

"It's been a double-edged sword," said Mac McCoy, Commerce City Schools superintendent. "We badly need for the state to adequately fund education, but we were having to write another check to the consortium at a time when money was tight, and we were already trying to do everything we could to get the money back to our children."

Commerce schools paid in enough to buy two new computer labs, McCoy said.

Oglethorpe County Schools Superintendent Jeffery Welch, who is president of the consortium, said he fears more school systems will drop out because of what he described as a scare tactic.

"I have no doubt that the governor's tactic will be scaring some away," Welch said. "All the news media are saying we have broken the law. (Baker) didn't say anything about an illegal use of funds."

The consortium plans to refile the lawsuit at a later date, Martin said.

"The real story is that the lawsuit will continue," he said.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Monday, February 09, 2009