Schrenko v. DeKalb County School Dist.

• Decision Date: 09 June 2003
• Docket Number: No. S03A0367.,S03A0367.
• Citation: Schrenko v. DeKalb County School Dist., 276 Ga. 786, 582 S.E.2d 109 (Ga. 2003)
• Parties: SCHRENKO et al. v. DeKALB COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT et al.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

582 S.E.2d 109

276 Ga. 786

SCHRENKO et al. v. DeKALB COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT et al.

No. S03A0367.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 9, 2003.

Reconsideration Denied July 11, 2003.

Thurbert E. Baker, Atty. Gen., Alfred L. Evans, Jr., Senior Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for appellants.

Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, Alfred A. Lindseth, Rocco E. Testani, Melanie W. Crowe, Atlanta; Weeks & Candler, Gary H. Sams, Decatur, for appellees. FLETCHER, Chief Justice.

The DeKalb County School District filed a mandamus action seeking to compel the State Board of Education to change its policy for allocating transportation funds to local school systems and reimburse DeKalb for its past costs in transporting students enrolled in the majority-to-minority transfer and magnet school programs. The trial court concluded that the State has improperly interpreted OCGA § 20-2-188, the student transportation statute, for nearly 40 years and ordered the State to pay $105 million to DeKalb for transportation costs incurred since 1978.

This appeal involves two issues: (1) whether the phrase "the school to which [students] are assigned" in OCGA § 20-2-188 means the school in the student's attendance zone or the school that the student actually attends and (2) whether mandamus may issue to compel payment of state education funds to local systems for their past costs in transporting students. Because the State has adopted a reasonable interpretation of "school to which they are assigned" as the school in the student's attendance zone, we hold that DeKalb is not entitled to mandamus relief to compel the State Board of Education to provide funding for the district's costs of transporting students to the M-to-M and magnet school programs. We reverse the trial court's contrary rulings.

Prior Proceedings

In 1990, the DeKalb County School District, members of the DeKalb County Board of Education, and several individuals sued the State in the federal district court in Atlanta to recover transportation and program costs incurred because of desegregation litigation involving the school district's former dual system of education.¹ On the state law claim, the federal district court held that the State's policy for funding transportation violated OCGA § 20-2-188(d), awarded $25 million in state funds to DeKalb for past transportation expenses, and ordered the State to base its future calculation of transportation funding on each student's actual school of attendance.² The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed.³ It held that the State was immune from liability under the Eleventh Amendment from the federal court's award of retrospective monetary damages and prospective injunctive relief.⁴

Four years later, DeKalb and the county school board members filed this mandamus action in state court against the State Superintendent of Schools, State Director of Transportation, and State Board of Education seeking to overturn the State's policy on state aid for pupil transportation that has been in place since the mid-1960's. DeKalb alleged that OCGA § 20-2-188 requires the State to provide transportation funding for M-to-M and magnet school students and sought payment for costs that it had incurred in providing transportation for those students since 1978. The parties conducted limited discovery and presented legal arguments, but no testimony, in a one-day hearing before the trial court; the voluminous record consists primarily of exhibits, documents, depositions, and trial transcripts from DeKalb's federal lawsuit and a similar suit filed in federal district court in Savannah on school desegregation.⁵

Ruling in DeKalb's favor on all issues, the trial court concluded that (1) OCGA § 20-2-188 requires state officials to calculate and pay transportation funds to local systems based on the school students actually attend; (2) mandamus is the appropriate remedy for the district to recover funds wrongfully withheld by the State since 1978; (3) the State is compelled to pay the district $68,070,433 in principal and $36,480,095 in interest for funds that should have been paid for student transportation between 1978 and 2001; and (4) the State must calculate and pay state transportation funds to DeKalb in the future based on the school that the student attends.

Like the earlier federal lawsuit, this case involves DeKalb's "effort to shift the burden for some of the costs of its desegregation measures to the State and, by extension, the state's taxpayers at large."⁶ Unlike the federal lawsuit and contrary to DeKalb's contentions, this appeal is not about whether the State's policy for funding student transportation is, or ever has been, racially discriminatory.⁷ Instead, the mandamus petition raises an issue concerning whether the State has properly construed the state transportation funding statute.

The Student Transportation Statute

OCGA § 20-2-188 is the provision in the Quality Basic Education Act that governs the State's allotment of state aid to local school systems for their costs in transporting students to school. Subsection (a) requires the State Board of Education to calculate the amount of funds that a local system needs to operate an economical and efficient student transportation program. These calculations are based on schedules of standard transportation costs and variable cost factors. In establishing these costs, the state board is given the discretion to consider many factors, including the number and density of students transported and areas served, the suitability of school bus routes, the types and numbers of buses used, the miles that buses travel, minimum bus loads, and transportation surveys.

Subsection (d) describes the "transported students" that the state may count for the purpose of calculating the local school system's expense of transporting students to and from school. The statute requires that all students, except handicapped students, must live more than one-and-a-half miles from their assigned school before they are eligible to be counted.

(d) Students who live beyond one and one-half miles from the school to which they are assigned, according to the nearest practical route by school bus, shall be eligible to be counted as transported students for the purpose of calculating that portion of the expense of student transportation associated with transporting students from home to school and from school to home as authorized under subsection (a) of this Code section, provided such students are actually transported to such school by school bus or other vehicle made available for this purpose by the local unit of administration. Any student who resides within such mileage limitation shall not be eligible to be counted for school transportation state-aid purposes, with the exception of disabled students being transported. (Emphasis supplied.) The primary issue in this case is the proper interpretation of "school to which they are assigned" in subsection (d). The State interprets the phrase to mean the school within the student's attendance zone, which is the geographic area that the local school system draws around each school. Based on this interpretation, the State has adopted a policy that reimburses local school systems for the transportation of students to and from the zone schools. DeKalb contends that the phrase means the school that the child actually attends. Under its interpretation, the State would be required to reimburse the district for the additional expense incurred in transporting students in the M-to-M and magnet school programs, who often live long distances from the schools they attend.

State Funding of Pupil Transportation

The student transportation statute now codified at OCGA § 20-2-188 was originally enacted as part of the Minimum Foundation Program of Education Act of 1964.⁸ After its enactment, the State Board of Education adopted a new formula for allocating state funds for student transportation. The State does not pay for the actual costs that local school systems incur in providing student transportation, but instead reimburses local systems for part of their transportation costs.

The grant formula in use since 1965 is based on a survey of local transportation needs. The local system periodically submits large survey maps that show the location of the system's schools, the attendance zone for each school, and the residence of the students who live more than one-and-a-half miles from their zone school. The State then designs a plan with hypothetical bus routes to achieve the most cost-efficient bus route system for the system. The State measures the route mileage in its plan to determine the number of buses needed to transport the children to their zone school. The State then calculates each local school system's allotment of state transportation funds based on the number of buses and route miles in these ideal routes. As the Eleventh Circuit found, "[t]hese calculations are made without regard to the actual schools to which any of the students are assigned or to the local district's actual bus routes or transportation expenses."⁹

The State's grant formula affects DeKalb's funding in two ways. First, the calculation does not count children who live within one-and-a-half miles of their zone school, but who attend a school more than one-and-a-half miles away under the M-to-M or magnet programs. Second, the state formula since 1986 undercounts the route mileage for children who live more than one-and-a-half miles from their zone school and attend a M-to-M or magnet school by treating those students as if they attended their nearby zone school.

Interpreting the Student Transportation Statute

1. In construing statutes, courts must consider the General Assembly's intent in enacting the statute, "keeping in view at all times the old law, the evil, and the remedy."¹⁰ All statutes relating to the same subject matter are construed together to...