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Neeley v. West Orange-Cove Consolidated Independent School Dist.11/22/2005
money into the system may forestall those challenges, but only for a time. They will repeat until the system is overhauled.
The judgment of the district court is modified and affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for reconsideration of the award of attorney fees.
I.
We begin by summarizing first the structure of the public school finance system in Texas as relevant to the issues in this case, then the evidence regarding the adequacy of public education thus financed, and finally the procedural background of the case. The record contains evidence through the end of the 2003-2004 school year, and our discussion of the present status of the system generally refers to that time frame unless otherwise noted.
A.
The basic structure of Texas' present public school finance system derives from Senate Bill 7 enacted by the Legislature in 1993. We have twice described the system thoroughly, including its historical evolution, and will not repeat here all that we have said before. In 1995, we held in Edgewood IV (among other things) that the system under Senate Bill 7 did not violate article VII, section 1, or article VIII, section 1-e of the Texas Constitution but noted that the system was "minimally acceptable only when viewed through the prism of history." The parties in this case contend that the operation of the system has changed since Edgewood IV, and so in the discussion that follows we include several comparisons between then and now.
Texas has a little over 4.3 million children in public schools, and the number is growing by more than 72,500 per year. More than half qualify for federally subsidized, free or reduced-price lunches and are therefore categorized by the State as economically disadvantaged. About 15% have limited proficiency in English. According to the State defendants' expert, the annual cost of public education is $30-35 billion, or about $7,000-8,000 per student, depending on what expenses are counted. More than half of the cost is funded by ad valorem taxes imposed by independent school districts on local property. The State funds only about 38% of the cost, down from about 43% in Edgewood IV, the lowest level in more than 50 years. The balance, usually around 8-9%, comes from the United States government.
There are 1,031 independent school districts - more than four times the number of counties. A fourth of public school students are educated in 12 districts in seven counties; half are educated in 45 districts. The largest district, Houston ISD, has 211,499 students, more than the combined student population in half of all the other districts put together. Two-thirds of the districts have fewer than 1,200 students each; half have fewer than 700 each; almost a fourth have fewer than 350 each; 11 districts have fewer than 60 each. Divide Independent School District in Kerr County, the smallest, has 10 students.
The Legislature's decision to rely so heavily on local property taxes to fund public education does not in itself violate any provision of the Texas Constitution, but in the context of a proliferation of local districts enormously different in size and wealth, it is difficult to make the result efficient - meaning "effective or productive of results and connot the use of resources so as to produce results with little waste" - as required by article VII, section 1 of the Constitution. Compensation must be made for disparities in the amount of property value per student so that property owners in property-poor districts are not burdened with much heavier tax rates than property owners in property-rich districts to generate substantially the same revenue per student for public educati
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