Texas Civil Rights Review

Author: mopress

  • One Affirmation for the Democrat Trial Judge

    In order for the wealthier districts to pursue higher local tax rates,
    they had to argue that the existing tax cap left them no ‘meaningful
    discretion’ beyond funding educational basics.  Here the Supreme
    Court agreed that the trial judge had made the right assessment; the
    richer districts in Texas needed more money:

    Meaningful discretion cannot be quantified; it is an
    admittedly imprecise standard. But we think its application in this
    case is not a close question. The district court found that the
    plaintiffs= Afocus districts@ for which evidence was offered Alack
    >meaningful discretion= in setting their local property tax rates.@
    Contrary to the dissent=s assertion, this finding was supported by
    evidence other than conclusory opinions of district superintendents.
    The district court detailed evidence showing 108 how the districts are
    struggling to maintain accreditation with increasing standards, a
    demographically diverse and changing student population, and fewer
    qualified teachers, while cutting budgets even further. The district
    court found that due to inadequate funding: 52.8% of the newly hired
    teachers in 2002 were not certified, up from 14.1% in 1996; more
    teachers were being required to teach outside their areas of expertise;
    and attrition and turnover were growing. The court cited the higher
    costs of educating economically disadvantaged students and students
    with limited English proficiency, noting that 90% of the growth in the
    student population has come from low-income families. And as set out in
    more detail above, the district court noted the increased curriculum,
    testing, and accreditation standards, and the increased costs of
    meeting them. These are facts, not opinions. The State defendants point
    to evidence of some discretionary spending on programs not essential to
    accreditation, but there is also evidence that such programs are
    important to keeping students in school.

  • Texas Justice: Rich Districts Need More Money Now!

    Poor Districts Can Wait

    It’s kind of an interesting pretzel to contemplate. Everybody’s
    education in Texas is good enough, but those with the best schools need better still,
    while those with the worst are not yet faced with an impossible
    situation. C’mon Texas, why not give the rich kids a break while the poor kids try harder! And the court so ordered it
    done.–gm

    [Please see seven-part review of Supreme Court decision below.]

  • Celebrity Justice: Jones v Hutchison

    Veteran actor TOMMY LEE JONES has criticised Texan Senator KAY BAILEY
    HUTCHINSON’s ideas on how to control immigration on the US/Mexico
    border.

    The FUGITIVE star, who lives in San Antonio near the
    Texas/Mexico border (sic) with his Hispanic wife DAWN, is angered by
    Hutchinson’s plans for vigilante groups to guard borders.

    He says, "We have a United States senator who has been quoted
    as saying that our borders are haemorrhaging, a bleeding wound… and
    wants to introduce a bill that pours millions (of dollars) into federal
    enforcement of the borders and by golly she wants to give money to the
    vigilante groups.

    "Just like a lot of politicians, (she) feeds on headlines.

    "In this case she’s making her appeal to rabid paranoia which is dangerous.

    "It’s a very complicated issue. There are people working in
    agriculture whose families have been split by the existence of this
    border and they’re willing and able to do jobs in the north that no one
    else will do.

    "They don’t deserve to have their culture and their families split in two." 11/11/2005. found at a few websites, not well sourced

  • Thanksgiving Delayed: Texas High Court Blesses Excellence and Inequality

    By Greg Moses

    OpEdNews / DissidentVoice / CounterPunch

    "Next year Lord we’d love to give thanks for everybody’s freedom and
    equality, but in the meantime please accept our appreciation for the
    fact that after you adjust for race and class, some of our kids seem
    not too pulled down by impossible situations."

    Such was the blessing spoken by the Texas Supreme Court this
    week as justices released a long-awaited school funding decision just
    in time for the American Winter Holiday Season.

    To the wealthier school districts of Texas (known as the West Orange
    Cove plaintiffs) the court granted permission to raise local tax rates
    in behalf of ‘educational excellence’ in all the right neighborhoods.

    To the rest of us, the court explained how the structure of funding in
    Texas does not make it impossible for poor districts to keep themselves
    accredited, and therefore the urgent pleadings from the poor districts
    for more support cannot be expected to rise to the level of
    constitutional concern.
    In one sense it was a crisp and clear ruling, cutting through
    the panic arguments filed by the state in an attempt to steer the case
    away from the godawful facts that had impressed the trial judge. Panic
    arguments such as the court has no jurisdiction nor the districts
    proper standing were one by one dismissed. After all, the court had
    already issued a decade or more of school funding rulings all named
    ‘Edgewood’ after a famous San Antonio school system.

    After cutting through the panic arguments, the court took the facts
    boldly in hand and said things like, sure, the buildings look like crap
    in these pictures, but what does that have to do with education? The
    kids seem to be passing, don’t they? It’s a bad situation, but it’s not
    that bad. One fourth of all school districts in Texas have not yet
    levied special taxes to support their own school buildings, so the
    question of the state’s obligation is beside the point.

    This Thanksgiving, we can give thanks to a few attorneys and school
    districts who jumped into the lawsuit because they wanted to make sure
    the rich districts didn’t run away with all the money. In that
    struggle, our longstanding heroes from Edgewood and Alvarado seem to
    have maintained a very costly line in the form of a warning from the
    Supreme Court that if things get much worse, well there has to be some
    limit to the amount of hypocrisy the court will publicly tolerate.

    MALDEF was quick to denounce the decision as justice delayed
    for the children of Texas. With richer districts now able to ‘enhance’
    their schools through higher local taxes than previously allowed, and
    with the legislature under no real court pressure to make things more
    equal (just don’t let them get much more unequal) the timeline for
    justice is matching up a little closer to that previously scheduled
    cold day in hell.

    “In 2003,” said the court, “Texas ranked last among the states
    in the percentage of high school graduates at least 25 years old in the
    population.” Fully half the Hispanic students and nearly half the
    African-American students drop out during high school. In Texas, Black
    and Hispanic students are the majority. By the year 2040, these
    ‘minorities’ will constitute two-thirds of the population. But the cost
    of a just education is difficult to quantify said the court. Glaring
    challenges of high school literacy the court could not quite translate
    into a single legal reason for constitutional urgency.

    There was a dissenting opinion: a heartfelt manifesto for
    justice through ‘competition’ duly applied to suggestions for
    competition between districts and more tax money for private schools.

    BTW, all those anti-affirmative action voices who say we should really
    start equalizing education at the elementary level? There were so many
    of them hollering when the Hopwood case was news. Today they seem quite
    happy to note with the Texas Supreme Court that democracy is still good
    enough for constitutional purposes so long as you know how to properly
    adjust your expectations for differences of race and class.

    Anyway, that’s the news from Texas. Dog bites kid. Pass the turkey please.

  • The Time Was Now: How the Texas High Court Failed the People

    By Greg Moses

    IndyMedia Austin / Houston / NorthTexas

    In the relationship between knowledge and freedom, children derive
    their right to free education. Take for example the Texas constitution
    of 1875 (Article VII, Section 1):

    A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the
    preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the
    duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable
    provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of
    public free schools.

    Into this succinct line of reasoning is packed a serious claim.
    Where there is no suitable education, there can be no real hope of
    preserving rights and liberties; therefore, elected representatives
    have a duty to establish, support, and maintain public schools.

    Yet in the wake of the latest collective judgment handed down by the
    Texas Supreme Court, we are left shaking our heads. The court has
    affirmed that Texas is dead last among the fifty states of the USA when
    it comes to high school literacy among adults 25 and older. And the
    court has stipulated that high-school-dropout rates consume fully half
    of the state’s Hispanic students and nearly half of African Americans.
    Yet, the court finds this system of public education adequate,
    suitable, and efficient.
    Had the court wanted to signal a higher standard of respect
    for ‘essential’ conditions of education, justices could not have
    concocted a more timely environment. A state district court had already
    ruled the education system unconstitutional, and the legislature had
    convened several special sessions ordered by the governor in open
    admission that something better should be done. But legislators, time
    after time, had failed; until finally they said it might be better to
    wait until the high court gave guidance.

    Because the trial court, the governor, and the legislature were already
    behaving as if a constitutional crisis in education had been reached,
    the Texas high court had only to stand squarely on the side of the
    rights and liberties of the people to issue a profound and lifting
    command. Yet the court retreated from the rights of the people and
    aligned itself instead with the prerogatives of a decadent legislature,
    whose inability to agree on some better course of action now stands in
    a sentimental glow of constitutional sympathy.

    Instead of casting into 21st Century law a progressive
    commitment to vigorous support for the “essential” institution of
    public ed, the court tottered backward, deferred to backward looking
    comparisons, and anchored its logic squarely in 19th Century habits of
    mind that have usually blunted the keen logic of the constitution.

    With a decisive choice before it, whether to raise
    expectations for the people or lower expectations for the legislature,
    the court decided that deference to the legislature was its wisest
    course. And so the court, when served up with a critical and hard-fought
    opportunity to enliven the relationship between knowledge and liberty
    among the people (an opportunity that will take many years to rebuild)–the court abandons its rare and recent tradition
    of trying to be part of the public education solution.

    In its deferential (cozy) embrace of the legislature, the
    court decided that so long as the legislature is not being “arbitrary”
    in its provision of education, its crucial provisions for the rights
    and liberties of the people cannot be second guessed.

    But what requires the court to be deferential to the legislature when
    it comes to assessing public education, especially if public education
    is so clearly founded on the need to preserve the liberties and rights
    of the people? It is to the liberties and rights of the people that the
    court is more urgently bound to defer, not to the liberties and rights
    of the legislature.

    A plain reading of the legislature’s actions since 1875 prove
    that in the absence of a jealous court, the state legislature tends to
    deflate the concept of public education, preferring to keep the rights
    and liberties of some people hostage to the rights and liberties of
    others. The paradigm for this pattern is marked out in two words: Jim
    Crow.

    Or to put it another way, if a jealous court is not actively
    protecting the rights and liberties of the people one and all, then the
    promise and hope of democracy loses an essential foundation of
    legitimacy within the state structure upheld by that court. A lousy
    court results not only in a lousy state, but in lousy hopes that the
    state can ever be democratically reformed. Yet the court in this case
    seems to believe that a lousy court can motivate a lousy legislature to
    do what it has never voted to do to date without court pressure. As a result of the court
    ruling, the promise of education for democracy in Texas is once again a revolutionary hope.