Education is important to Florida voters. The state Constitution calls it a "paramount duty." If lawmakers don't start acting that way, they could be headed for court.
Published March 28, 2004
Three times in the past six years, Florida voters have said they want more for their public schools, but lawmakers still don't seem to get it. In the Capitol, they complain that smaller class sizes are financially unattainable, though 43 other states somehow manage to do better. They are treating prekindergarten like a part-time babysitting service, though voters insisted on better.
Florida, which spends less on each student than 42 other states, keeps trying to cut corners even when its own Constitution proclaims education to be "paramount." It is that particular command - that schooling is a "paramount duty" and that students are to receive a "high quality education" - that lawmakers now disregard at their own peril.
The elected school boards across Florida have put together a high-powered panel of legal, political, educational and business minds to analyze what is called the education adequacy provision that voters adopted in 1998. The panel, led by two generals, former state Attorney General Bob Butterworth and retired Marine general and former state Comptroller Bob Milligan, already is sensing that a constitutional showdown may be inevitable.
"If the Legislature doesn't do anything with this," Butterworth says, "there will no doubt be a court case."
This is not an idle threat. It is already happening elsewhere.
Courts in 13 states have ruled that education systems fail to meet the standards of their constitutions. A roughly equal number of state courts have rejected such cases, but the kicker is that legal scholars are calling Florida's new constitutional provision the most rigorous in the nation. The constitutional language in Texas and Kentucky, for example, where courts ordered sweeping improvements in public schools, is much less demanding by comparison. Texas merely requires "suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public schools."
In Florida, too, the courts wouldn't have to engage in guesswork about intent, because the amendment was devised in open proceedings of the Constitutional Revision Commission, and its authors were clear about what they sought. Miami attorney Robert Brochin said at the time he wanted the provision to put education "where it rightfully belongs as . . . the highest category, meaning it demands the highest responsibility of this state to provide the education for all our children."
Would Florida meet such a test?
The voters don't seem to think so, which explains the amendments to reduce class size and create a prekindergarten system, as well as the successful school tax referendums in at least 37 counties. School boards obviously are concerned as well, having been forced to cut back on curriculum offerings and lay off counselors and support staff and, in some cases, teachers. Some parents see school factories, where middle schools are sometimes larger than small colleges and trailers are perched in schoolyards to keep up with rising enrollment. In its most recent assessment of the nation's schools, Education Week awarded Florida a D+
for the adequacy of its effort and noted that it is one of only four states whose annual per-student spending has not kept pace with inflation over the past decade.
Ask any Tallahassee politician, and he or she will say that education is of "paramount" concern. But the actions speak louder than the words. That's why Florida may be headed for an ugly, costly, undesirable legal showdown. The people have said they want better, and the lawmakers just won't listen.
