Hartley v. Berlin-Milan Local School Dist., BERLIN-MILAN

• Decision Date: 26 February 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-277,BERLIN-MILAN,81-277
• Citation: 69 Ohio St.2d 415,433 N.E.2d 171
• Parties: , 23 O.O.3d 370, 3 Ed. Law Rep. 375 HARTLEY et al., Appellees, v.LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT et al., Appellants.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 415

69 Ohio St.2d 415

433 N.E.2d 171, 23 O.O.3d 370, 3 Ed. Law Rep. 375

HARTLEY et al., Appellees, v. BERLIN-MILAN LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICT et al., Appellants.

No. 81-277.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Feb. 26, 1982.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Children who attend a non-public school are entitled to transportation under R.C. 3327.01, unless their circumstances specifically except them under that section.

2. A local school board must strictly comply with the requirements of R.C. 3327.01 before making payments in lieu of transportation under that section to children who attend a non-public school.

Appellees are the parents of students who reside in the Berlin-Milan School District and attend St. Peter School in the adjacent Huron district. The Berlin-Milan School District, its superintendent and the Berlin-Milan Local School Board ("appellants") have refused appellees' request for transportation for children attending St. Peter School but have made payments in lieu of transportation since 1974.

Appellees brought this action in the Court of Common Pleas seeking: (1) a declaratory judgment that appellants are required by law to transport appellees' children to school; and (2) an injunction requiring this transportation. The trial court granted both requests after refusing to join as parties the parents of children residing in the Berlin-Milan District and attending other non-public schools.

The Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed and upheld the factual finding of the trial court that the Berlin-Milan Local School Board abused its discretion.

The cause is now before this court pursuant to the allowance of a motion to certify the record.

Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, Thomas G Pletz, Dennis P. Witherell, Toledo, Murphey, Young & Smith and David J. Young, Columbus, for appellees.

Miller & Fegen Co., L.P.A., Michael R. Fegen and Richard Grimes, Norwalk, for appellants.

LOCHER, Justice.

This appeal presents two issues: (1) whether the trial court erred by granting declaratory judgment and injunctive relief for appellees; and (2) whether the trial court erred by overruling appellants' motion for joinder.

I.

Appellants argue that the trial court usurped the authority of the local school board and improperly entered a declaratory judgment in favor of appellees. We disagree.

R.C. 2721.03 permits a court to issue a declaratory judgment regarding "rights, status, or other legal relations" under a statute. Boards of education must function within the limited powers granted to them by statute. See Schwing v. McClure (1929), 120 Ohio St. 335, 166 N.E.2d 230; Verberg v. Bd. of Edn. (1939), 135 Ohio St. 246, 20 N.E.2d 368. The trial court reviewed the rights of appellees to receive school transportation for their children under R.C. Chapter 3327, the "Fair Busing Law." R.C. 3327.01 provides, in pertinent part:

"In all city, exempted village, and local school districts where resident school pupils in grades kindergarten through eight live more than two miles from the school for which the state board of education prescribes minimum standards pursuant to division (D) of section 3301.07 of the Revised Code and to which they are assigned by the board of education of the district of residence or to and from the non-public school which they attend the board of education shall provide transportation for such pupils to and from such school except when, in the judgment of such board, confirmed by the state board of education, such transportation is unnecessary or unreasonable." (Emphasis added.) ¹

Under R.C. 3327.01, therefore, transportation is the rule and payment is the exception. ² The local school board may not make this judgment unilaterally. Rather, R.C. 3327.01 requires that the State Board of Education confirm the decision to make payment in lieu of transportation. ³

In this case, the local school board did not receive a confirmation from the state board. ⁴ Having failed to do so, the local board did not satisfy one of the conditions for payment in lieu of transportation. Likewise, the trial court found that the other requirements for payment in lieu of transportation had not been met: "Plaintiffs live in homes along the present bus routes; the statutory time, distance, accreditation, and nondiscriminatory conditions have been satisfied by Plaintiffs. The School Board * * * cannot be excused from providing busing to the Plaintiffs since the facts herein demonstrate that it is not impractical nor impracticable to provide busing to Plaintiff-children. The School Board's decision not to bus the children does not fall within the exceptions allowed by law."

The Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the trial court's factual finding as being supported by the manifest weight of the evidence. In accordance with R.C. 2505.31, we will not weigh the evidence. See G. S. T. v. Avon Lake (1976), 48 Ohio St.2d 63, fn. 2, at page 65, 357 N.E.2d 38; State, ex rel. Pomeroy, v. Webber (1965), 2 Ohio St.2d 84, 85-86, 206 N.E.2d 204.

Accordingly, we hold that the Court of Appeals correctly affirmed the trial court's granting of a declaratory judgment and injunction in favor of appellees.

II.

Appellants argue that the trial court erred by refusing to join the parents of children residing in the Berlin-Milan School District and attending other non-public schools. We disagree. ⁵

Civ.R. 19(A) provides, in pertinent part: "A person who is subject to service of process shall be joined as a party in the action if (1) in his absence complete relief cannot be accorded among the parties * * *." ⁶ We agree with the Court of Appeals that the trial court could (and did) fashion "a complete and appropriate remedy among those already (a) party." Transportation to and from the other schools would provide unique problems. The parents of children attending these other schools, therefore, were not necessary to provide relief in this case.

Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

Judgment affirmed.

FRANK D. CELEBREZZE, C. J., and WILLIAM B. BROWN, SWEENEY and PATTON, JJ., concur.

HOLMES, J., concurs in the judgment.

KRUPANSKY, J., dissents.

PATTON, J., of the Eighth Appellate District, sitting for Clifford F. BROWN, J.

SWEENEY, Justice.

I concur wholeheartedly in the foregoing judgment and opinion. I write separately solely for the purpose of speaking to what I perceive to be an important question not specifically addressed in the majority opinion. This question relates to how a school board is to determine impracticality for purposes of R.C. Chapter 3327.

Appellants and the amicus, Ohio School Boards Association, take the position that the courts below effectively divested the local board of its discretionary authority to determine whether transportation to non-public school pupils is ever impractical if the statutory pre-conditions-accreditation, nondiscrimination, and time and distance requirements-are met. I can accept the amicus' proposition that a board may consider factors other than statutory conditions, and appellants' second proposition that a practicality determination includes consideration of economic and logistic feasibility, without disturbing the judgments below because the trial court implicitly and the Court of Appeals explicitly found that the board had abused its discretion in this particular instance. Neither of the lower courts, however, established an analytic framework to determine whether transporting non-public school pupils may ever be impractical. The appropriate test for impracticality, assuming the other statutory pre-conditions are met, should include consideration of, inter alia : (1) the cost of providing transportation in terms of equipment, maintenance, personnel, and administration; (2) the number of pupils to be transported to non-public schools; (3) whether the board provides similar or equivalent service to public school pupils, e.g., it may be impractical for a school district operating neighborhood schools to provide bus service for non-public school pupils when it does not provide such service for public school pupils; (4) whether and to what extent the additional service to non-public school pupils unavoidably disrupts current transportation schedules.

The above test for impracticality is consistent with the (inartful) statutory language and provides school boards a modicum of flexibility in transportation matters without losing sight of the underlying proposition, well-stated in the majority opinion, that "transportation is the rule and payment is the exception."

FRANK D. CELEBREZZE, C. J., and WILLIAM B. BROWN a...