Jennings v. Exeter-West Greenwich Regional School Dist. Committee

• Decision Date: 01 March 1976
• Docket Number: EXETER-WEST,No. 74-200-M,74-200-M
• Citation: 116 R.I. 90,352 A.2d 634
• Parties: John JENNINGS et al. v.GREENWICH REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT COMMITTEE. P.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

Page 634

352 A.2d 634

116 R.I. 90

John JENNINGS et al. v. EXETER-WEST GREENWICH REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT COMMITTEE.

No. 74-200-M.P.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

March 1, 1976.

[116 R.I. 101] John D. Biafore, Dennis H. Esposito, Providence, for plaintiffs-respondents.

Gorham & Gorham Incorporated, Bradford Gorham, Providence, for defendant-petitioner.

Amato A. DeLuca, Warwick, for American Civil Liberties Union, amicus curiae.

OPINION

PAOLINO, Justice.

The petitioner here is the Exeter-West Greenwich Regional School District Committee (the school committee). The respondents, John Jennings and Terrence Sullivan, are parents residing within that school district. We granted certiorari to review a decision of the Board of Regents for Education ordering the school committee to provide respondents' children bus transportation to and from the private school they attend.

The respondents, who live in Exeter, decided to send their children to the Roman Catholic Monsignor Matthew F. Clarke Regional School in South Kingstown after that school voted on August 3, 1973 to expand its territory to include parishes in Exeter, North Kingstown, Charlestown and Richmond. The Clarke School had previously accepted students only from parishes in Narragansett and South Kingstown. Associate Commissioner of Education, Dr. William P. Robinson, Jr., was notified of the change, and on August 10 he sent a letter to the superintendent of the school district stating that, in his opinion, G.L.1956 (1969 Reenactment) § 16-21-2 required the school committee to provide transportation to residents of the district attending the Clarke School.

The school committee afforded the respondents' children transportation to and from the Clarke School at the beginning of the school year in September 1973. However, on September 11, the school committee notified the respondents that it would not provide transportation after September 14, 1973. Six days later Dr. Robinson again wrote to the school committee asking it to review its decision. When the school committee declined to do so, respondents appealed to Dr. Robinson, who ordered the school committee to provide transportation to respondents' children. The Board of Regents affirmed.

I

The school committee's first contention is that it was denied a hearing before an impartial examiner. The substance of this claim is that Dr. Robinson's letters of August 10 and September 17, advising the school committee that it was required to provide transportation to the Clarke School, indicated a bias in the controversy. We cannot agree.

Doctor Robinson did not prejudge the merits of this individual controversy. He did no more than give an opinion as to the general meaning of the statute. The United States Supreme Court has squarely held that such an opinion is not the kind of prejudgment that requires an examiner to disqualify himself. Federal Trade Comm'n v. Cement Institute, 333 U.S. 683, 68 S.Ct. 793, 92 L.Ed. 1010, rehearing denied, 334 U.S. 839, 68 S.Ct. 1492, 92 L.Ed. 1764 (1948).

In Cement Institute, members of the Federal Trade Commission, as a result of an ex parte investigation, had stated to Congress that they believed multiple basing point-pricing to be an illegal restraint of trade. The Court held that these statements did not disqualify the commission from later issuing a cease and desist order against the defendants' multiple basing point-pricing system. First, the Court reasoned that requiring disqualification in such circumstances would frustrate Congress's purpose in creating the commission because the members would not be able to utilize the expertise they acquired.

'If the Commission's opinions expressed in congressionally required reports would bar its members from acting in unfair trade proceedings, it would appear that opinions expressed in the first basing point unfair trade proceeding would similarly disqualify them from ever passing on another. (citation omitted) Thus experience acquired from their work as commissioners would be a handicap instead of an advantage.' Federal Trade Comm'n v. Cement Institute, supra 333 U.S. at 702, 68 S.Ct. 804, 92 L.Ed. at 1035.

Second, if the commission members were disqualified, similar reasoning would mandate that judges be disqualified from hearing any case involving a question of law on which they had previously ruled or written. Clearly, such a requirement had never been imposed on the judiciary and, in the Court's view, the commissioners should not be more restricted than judges.

II

The school committee's second contention is that the associate commissioner should not have issued his order because there was no justiciable controversy. The school committee claims that respondents had suffered no harm because at the time of their appeal they had not yet been asked to pay for replacement transportation. In essence, petitioner argues that the case was not 'ripe.'

Without deciding whether the 'case or controversy' requirement applies with full force to appeals heard by the assistant commissioner, we hold that the case was 'ripe' for adjudication. The respondents suffered harm in that they had to make arrangements with the North Kingstown school district for transportation. The respondent Sullivan had to drive his child several miles to link up with this alternative transportation. Moreover, Sullivan had been informed by the North Kingstown school district that he would be billed in some manner in the future. Sullivan was thus placed in the kind of debilitating uncertainty that the United States Supreme Court has held makes an action ripe. Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 87 S.Ct. 1507, 18 L.Ed.2d 681 (1967). He was forced to choose whether to transfer his child to the public schools or risk being forced to pay in the future for the transportation costs that will continue to accure.

III

The school committee's third contention is that it is not required to bus the respondents under § 16-21-2. That section provides:

'In the event that any such public or private schools are consolidated, regionalized, or otherwise established to serve residents of a specific area within the state the school committee of any town shall provide such transportation for pupils attending said schools who reside within the town and within the area served by such school notwithstanding the location of the school without the limits of the town if the pupils reside so far from the school that transportation to school is provided within the town for other pupils who reside as far from school.' (Emphasis added.)

The school committee argues that the emphasized words fix the maximum distance that the school committee is required to bus private school children; that is, it is not required to bus private school students any farther than it busses public school students. Testimony before the associate commissioner indicated that respondents' children would be bussed farther than any pupil in the Exeter public school system.

The associate commissioner and the Regents, on the other hand, interpreted the quoted language to mean that the school committee must bus private school students regardless of the distance, provided they live at least as far from their school as the minimum distance that public school students are bussed.

The language itself is susceptible of either interpretation. However, an examination of the statutory history leads us to conclude that the associate commissioner's interpretation is the correct one.

Prior to 1971, §§ 16-21-1 and 16-21-2 read as follows:

'The school committee of any town shall provide suitable transportation to and from school for pupils attending public schools of elementary and high school grades who reside so far from any public school as to make their regular attendance at school impracticable and for any pupil whose regular attendance would otherwise be impracticable on account of physical disability or infirmity.' (Emphasis added.)

'The school committee of any town shall provide for pupils attending private schools of elementary and high school grades, except such schools as are operated for profit, the same rights and privileges as to transportation to and from schools as are provided for pupils attending public schools.'

Section 16-21-1 clearly established only a mimimum limit, the purpose of the limit being simply that students should be bussed to public schools only if they live too far to be able to walk there easily. Section 16-21-2 merely granted identical benefits to private school students, thereby incorporating the minimum distance concept. In Chaves v. School Committee, 100 R.I. 140, 211 A.2d 639 (1965), this court held that § 16-21-2 did not require school committees to bus residents to private schools outside the public school district. We think it clear that when the Legislature passed the present sections, which require bussing to certain public and private schools outside the public school district, it was responding specifically to our holding in Chaves, while retaining the minimum distance concept of the former version.

We believe the associate commissioner's interpretation is more persuasive even apart from the legislative history. The minimum distance concept is consistent with the statutory purpose of providing transportation for students attending private schools within and without the public school district. Under the minimum distance interpretation, all students who live too far to walk are provided bus transportation. On the other hand, the maximum distance public school students are bussed bears no relationship whatever to the need of private school students. The school committee's interpretation would yield highly arbitrary results. Student A might be bussed the entire distance to school, while student B, attending the same private school and living no farther away, might be transported only part way because his school district does not bus public school students as far as A's...