Woonsocket Sch. Comm. v. Honorable Lincoln Chafee in His Official Capacity

• Decision Date: 02 May 2014
• Docket Number: No. 2012–271–Appeal.,2012–271–Appeal.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court
• Parties: WOONSOCKET SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al. v. The Honorable Lincoln CHAFEE in his official capacity as the Governor of the State of Rhode Island et al.

89 A.3d 778

WOONSOCKET SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al.

v.The Honorable Lincoln CHAFEE in his official capacity as the Governor of the State of Rhode Island et al.

No. 2012–271–Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

May 2, 2014.

Samuel D. Zurier, Esq., Stephen M. Robinson, Esq., Providence, for Plaintiffs.

Rebecca T. Partington, Esq., Providence, Claire J. Richards, Esq., for Defendants.

Present: SUTTELL, C.J., GOLDBERG, FLAHERTY, ROBINSON, and INDEGLIA, JJ.

OPINION

Chief Justice SUTTELL, for the Court.

Few responsibilities of government are as important as providing for the education of children; few issues are as passionately debated by citizens as the appropriate way to meet that responsibility. This case concerns the parameters of the General Assembly's duty to promote public education, which is set forth in the Education Clause, article 12, section 1 of the Rhode Island Constitution. Specifically, the plaintiffs challenge the legislatively enacted school funding formula, which, they allege, fails to allocate adequate resources to less affluent communities. These plaintiffs maintain that said formula, together with a confluence of statutory mandates, Rhode Island Department of Education regulations, educational standards, and the low tax capacity of certain urban municipalities, operate to inhibit students in their respective cities from obtaining a quality education.

The plaintiffs in this case are the Woonsocket and Pawtucket School Committees and their respective Superintendents, and unnamed students enrolled in Woonsocket and Pawtucket public schools, as well as their unnamed parents (collectively, plaintiffs). These various plaintiffs brought suit against the legislative and executive branches of Rhode Island's state government, specifically: the Governor, the Senate President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the General Assembly, and the State Treasurer (collectively, defendants). The plaintiffs sought injunctive and declaratory relief, alleging violations of the Education Clause as well as of their substantive due process and equal protection rights. The plaintiffs now appeal from the Superior Court's order granting defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint. For the reasons set forth herein, we affirm the order of the Superior Court.

IFacts and Procedural History

The causes of action currently before this Court for review are set forth in plaintiffs' eighty-one-page, 537–paragraph “second amended petition” (the complaint), which was filed on April 8, 2011. Due to the detail and length of this pleading, we shall only outline the factual allegations asserted therein. ¹

The complaint begins with a summary of the origins of public education in Rhode Island. The plaintiffs assert that each city and town in Rhode Island contained at least one public school by the end of the eighteenth century and that the General Assembly began legislating in this arena in 1828. The plaintiffs note that Rhode Island's Constitution of 1842 ² included an education clause, article 12, section 1, which read as follows:

“The diffusion of knowledge, as well as of virtue among the people, being essential to the preservation of their rights and liberties, it shall be the duty of the general assembly to promote public schools, and to adopt all means which they may deem necessary and proper to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.”

The plaintiffs assert that “[i]n the decades that followed [the 1842 Constitution] the General Assembly established, as a matter of state law, that public schools would be available to all at no charge.” The General Assembly enacted compulsory school attendance laws beginning in 1893, with various additions and changes to these laws continuing through 2007. The complaint outlines the creation of the State Board of Education in 1870, the subsequent regulation of teachers, and the creation of high schools.

The plaintiffs allege that “[i]n 1960, the General Assembly sought to systematically define all of the elements of an appropriate education” and passed laws that required school districts to ensure a sufficient budget to support this basic educational program.The General Assembly delegated to the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education (Board of Regents) the responsibility of defining the mandated minimum program, and the Board of Regents in turn directed the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) to prepare a Basic Education Program Manual (BEP Manual) in the 1980s. The BEP Manual set forth a basic educational program that was to be available to each student, regardless of where in the state the student attended school.

The plaintiffs next address how the General Assembly has “codified a series of minimum mandatory performance standards in core subjects that each child in Rhode Island must attain.” Pursuant to 1997 legislation (P.L.1997, ch. 30, Art. 31, codified at G.L.1956 chapter 7.1 of title 16) referred to as “Article 31,” the General Assembly directed the Board of Regents to develop an assessment program in order to measure students' educational progress against a standard of “proficiency.” In 2001, the federal “No Child Left Behind Act” also required states to develop plans that incorporated challenging academic standards into the content of each student's education. In response to Article 31 and the No Child Left Behind Act, the Board of Regents created grade-level standards for all Rhode Island students in the core subjects of reading, written and oral communication, mathematics, science, and civics. Between 2003 and 2008, the Board of Regents enacted “literacy regulations,” which included high-school graduation requirements, statewide curricula, English-language-learner regulations, and regulations aimed at reducing high-school dropout rates.

Rhode Island also adopted the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP), which is a yearly standardized test that assesses all students in reading, mathematics, and writing, with selected grades assessed in science. The NECAP tests measure children's content knowledge against RIDE's standards for what each student should know according to his or her grade level. NECAP scores are classified into four levels: proficient with distinction, proficient, partially proficient, and substantially below proficient.

In 2009, the Board of Regents promulgated revisions to the BEP Manual, requiring school districts to “provide a comprehensive program of study in English language arts, mathematics, social studies, the sciences, visual arts & design and the performing arts, engineering and technology, comprehensive health, and world language throughout the PK–12 system.” In January 2011, RUDE promulgated a draft set of proposed revisions to its 2008 high-school regulations, which articulated specific high-school graduation requirements. These requirements provided in part that, beginning with the class of 2012, students would be required to achieve NECAP scores of “partially proficient” in order to earn a diploma. After teachers and students expressed concern that the diploma requirements would harm the future of children unable to attain a sufficiently high score on the NECAP assessments, the Board of Regents approved a revised regulation that postponed the NECAP assessment graduation requirement until the class of 2014.

In the next section of their complaint, plaintiffs address the lack of parity between educational standards and funding. The plaintiffs express support for the policies of RIDE and the Board of Regents aimed at “enact[ing] minimum education program standards for all of Rhode Island's children”; plaintiffs' claim for judicial relief centers on “the General Assembly's failure to allocate adequate resources to permit the realization of those standards.”The plaintiffs assert that, beginning in 1991, the General Assembly's funding policy has “lack[ed] a rational relationship to community need, and ha[s] increased the burdens on urban communities to an unsustainable level, depriving them of the resources needed to educate their children to the minimum level mandated by the State.”

The plaintiffs begin this portion of the complaint with a discussion of the “1960 funding formula,” which provided for school districts to set their own budgets, with the state paying a proportion (the “share ratio”) of these budgets based on each district's relative property-tax wealth per student. This funding formula was titled the “operations aid” program. The formula was amended in 1967 and 1988 to increase the state's share of funding; in 1991, however, the state failed to provide full funding for the operations aid program and imposed a reduction of $26.3 million pro rata among the districts. ³ The plaintiffs assert that the operations aid funding from 1997 through 2005 “was not proportionate to a district's student population, relative wealth, or any measurable criterion” and that, “[b]y 2004–5, the state share for education remained at 43%, one of the seven lowest in the country.”

In 1995, the General Assembly enacted the “Caruolo Act” (P.L.1995, ch. 173, § 1), codified at G.L.1956 § 16–2–21.4, which “created a remedy in Superior Court for school districts to sue municipal governments when the schools lacked adequate resources to provide the minimum education required under the [BEP Manual].” The plaintiffs allege, however, that the Caruolo Act could not achieve its purported goal of vindicating children's rights to adequately funded education because communities such as Woonsocket and Pawtucket “simply lack[ ] the capacity to raise sufficient local funds to provide a quality education program for [their] children.”

In 2006, the General Assembly enacted the “Paiva–Weed Act” (P.L.2006, ch. 253, § 5), amending § 16–2–21, which “placed limits on annual increases in municipal taxes.” The plaintiffs assert that the Paiva–Weed Act placed an initial cap of 5.5 percent on municipal taxes in 2006, with a...