Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding versus Rell could be the most far-reaching state education lawsuit since the Sheff vs. O’Neill desegregation case. A coalition of municipalities, boards of education, parents and teachers say that under Connecticut’s constitution, the state must provide children with an equitable and adequate education. They say that means that students should be prepared for college and to become effective citizens. A Superior Court judge dismissed the “adequacy” portion of the lawsuit. The plaintiffs appealed to the CT Supreme Court.  Five justices heard oral arguments in April 2008.  A few months ago, the court added two more judges to the case, so a full seven-member bench will ultimately issue the decision.

Yale Law School Clinical Professor Robert Solomon is the attorney for the plaintiffs. He’s not surprised by the long wait for a ruling. “Given that Kerrigan, the same sex marriage case took equally as long and it’s a major constitutional decision I as a litigant would hope we would have heard by now but I can’t say its shockingly long.”

Lawyers for the state argue that it’s the responsibility of the legislature and not the Supreme Court - to address quality of education issues. Once a decision is announced, the case will go to trial.

Listen to the NPR story by Diane Orson

CCJEF v. Rell is probably the single most important education case since the landmark desegregation case, Sheff v. O’Neill, which was filed 20 years ago this week.

While the full seven-member bench could have heard CCJEF last year, two justices decided not to sit, leaving five members to decide the case.

That was then.

Two weeks ago, as the year April 21st anniversary approached, Michele T. Angers, the court’s chief clerk, wrote a letter to attorneys announcing that the Court has ordered an “en banc” court. That is, instead of letting the five justices who heard the case rule on the case, it had decided to add two justices to the case in order to create a full seven-member bench.

“The urgency of our claims should be obvious,” said Dianne Kaplan deVries, the CCJEF project director. “While we’ve waited these past 12 months for a decision from the Supreme Court, thousands of students have dropped out of our public schools, with Latino students leaving at four times the rate of their white peers, and blacks and American Indians at three times the white dropout rate.

“Also this past year some 47,000 schoolchildren failed to score at even the “basic” reading level on the state’s assessments, and 40 percent of all Connecticut schools failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind.”

Yale Law School Clinical Professor Robert Solomon, who has overseen the CCJEF case, told the Eagle: “We are certainly pleased that a major constitutional case will be resolved en banc, but it is an important case that still has to go to trial, and we hope we can get a Supreme Court decision as quickly as possible.”

Read the entire New Haven Independent story by Marcia Chambers

“You can’t squeeze blood from a stone.”

“We’re facing a tsunami.”

Public education is a ship in troubled water, heading straight toward an iceberg without radar or binoculars.

The bottom line: We need more money from the state or we need relief from unfunded mandates. And we need it now.

“The governor and General Assembly must recognize that the bulk of education costs cannot continue to be passed on to cities and towns,” said Dianne Kaplan deVries, the project director for the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding.

DeVries was one of several speakers at a press conference hosted by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Municipal and school leaders from across the state gathered at the Legislative Office Building to urge lawmakers to give more relief to towns and cities that don’t feel they can raise taxes any higher to balance budgets.

Education leaders argued that municipalities need more money from the state’s Education Cost Sharing grants. In their budget proposals, both Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the Democrat-led legislature proposed keeping funding the same as last year for the grants.

“We appreciate flat funding,” said Cal Heminway, president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and a member of the Granby Board of Education. “But understand that flat funding is actually a cut on a local level.”

Read the entire Hartford Courant story by Jodie Mozdzer

During a news conference attended by about 200 chief elected officials, budget experts and school administrators, the leaders called for more state funding for education and warned that less state aid will mean higher property taxes locally…

Diane deVries, project director of the Connecticut Coalition for Justice In Education Funding, which is awaiting a decision on state funding in the Connecticut Supreme Court, said neither the governor’s budget, proposed in February, nor the majority Democratic package voted in committee last week, has enough funding through the Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) formula.

 ”Quite simply, flat funding of the ECS is a cut,” she said. “The short-term ramifications of the state’s broken, outmoded school finance system and its heavy reliance on local property taxes are already apparent: inadequately resourced schools, gross inequities of school quality, unacceptably low academic performance by students in far too many communities, and the nation’s worst achievement gap.”

Read the entire Connecticut Post story by Ken Dixon

Both Governor Jodi Rell and the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee have proposed flat-funding the Education Cost Sharing grant, or ECS, that municipalities receive from the state.

According to Dianne Kaplan deVries, the Project Director for the State’s Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, these budget proposals will result in massive layoffs, larger class sizes, and many program cuts.

“As municipalities and their school boards struggle to pay for rising wages tied to contractual obligations, ever-escalating healthcare premiums, soaring special education costs, and heavy burdens owing to No Child Left Behind and other federal and state mandates, the Governor and the general assemble must recognize that the bulk of education costs cannot continue to be passed on to cities and towns.”

Read the entire NPR story

The Connecticut Supreme Court now faces an historic question: Do schoolchildren have the right to an adequate education?

CCJEF argues that under the constitution’s education clause, children do indeed have the right to a meaningful, quality education consistent with the needs of today’s competitive economy, the rigors of higher education, and full participation in a democratic society.

The State argues that there is no such constitutional right, that its duty to schoolchildren is minimal and that so long as education is free and “equally inadequate,” there’s no reason for the courts to intervene in matters that ought to be left to the discretion of the other two branches of state government.

The Court’s decision is expected soon.

Watch the news conference that briefly explains CCJEF’s appeal

Watch the Supreme Court oral arguments in CCJEF v.Rell

Read news clips of the CCJEF v. Rell appeal

The law students, David Noah and Neil Weare, are members of the Yale Law Education Adequacy Project, a clinic type class that brought the lawsuit in 2005 on behalf of Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF). Several major cities and towns have joined the lawsuit. At this juncture, only one of four counts in the complaint remains.

Noah and Weare, both 27, sat at a table Monday in the well of the courtroom along with their professor, Robert Solomon. The class works under the supervision of Solomon and two attorneys, Robin Golden and Alex Knopp.

Read the entire New Haven Independent story by Marcia Chambers

Back in 1965, Bernstein had been largely responsible for crafting an article added to the state constitution guaranteeing “free public elementary and secondary schools.” A former Hartford alderman and Bloomfield school board member, Bernstein’s experience with local school funding debates had convinced him of the need to make education a fundamental right.

“I thought I was giving a simple clear statement without any unnecessary words that could be misinterpreted,” said Bernstein, now 95 and a retired judge.

But on Tuesday, the exact meaning of those words were up for debate as the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit challenging the way the state funds education.

The lawsuit was brought against the state on behalf of 10 families with children in public schools and the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, a group of education and municipal organizations.

It claims that the state fails to maintain a suitable and substantially equal education system by providing inadequate resources and conditions for education in many school districts, leaving students unprepared for jobs or continuing education and likely politically and socially marginalized.

Read the entire Hartford Courant story by Arielle Levin Becker

In 2005 a coalition of municipalities, boards of ed, parents and teachers known as CCJEF filed a lawsuit, charging that Connecticut’s public financing system violates students’ constitutional right to an equitable and adequate education. Last year, a Superior court judge dismissed the “adequacy” part of the lawsuit.; CCJEF appealed straight to the Connecticut Supreme Court.

Much of the hearing centered around - how to define an “adequate” or “suitable” education. Two Yale Law School students argued on behalf of the plaintiffs. They pointed to underperforming schools in Bridgeport and Meriden and said the state’s constitution gives these students the right to be prepared for a world beyond high school.

Read the entire NPR story by Diane Orson

Poor educational quality is holding children back in cities such as Bridgeport, while other school systems, especially in the wealthier suburbs, are preparing their children to join the 21st century’s global economy, they said.

“The problem is that at some schools, students aren’t learning,” said Neil Weare, 27, a third-year law student. “When they graduate, they simply cannot read. They don’t have the math skills to go on to college or even to get a meaningful living-wage job.”

Weare and David Noah, a second-year law student, were allowed to argue before the state’s highest court as part of the Yale Law Education Adequacy Project, savings plaintiffs millions of dollars.

The project filed the suit in November 2005 for plaintiffs including Nekita Carroll-Hall, of Bridgeport, who has two children in the local school system. The suit was rejected at the lower court level, setting the scene for Tuesday’s make-or-break hearing in a packed courtroom.

“No matter how you describe it, the purposes of public education are clear and these purposes are to prepare students to — after graduation — be able to get a job or go on to college, to be able to be effective citizens within our democracy,” Weare said. “We’re asking the court to decide whether the state is meeting its constitutional duties.”

“Thirty years ago, this court recognized that Connecticut schoolchildren have the fundamental right to education,” Noah said. “The question before the court today is whether that right has any meaningful content.”

Read the entire Connecticut Post story by Ken Dixon