Dividing the Cake

For years, middle-class parents of school-age children have fled the cities to inviting suburbs, to take advantage of their superior school systems. They were better because the property was richer there, and the property taxes that support most school systems produced more money for better buildings, better teachers, better facilities. Poorer districts in the cities simply could not compete. Incomes were lower, property values were lower and there were far more kids crowded into far less space. Even if tax rates were raised to the limit, the resulting income could not provide anything but minimal schooling.

Last week a decision by the California Supreme Court threatened to upset this long-accepted economic imbalance. In Serrano v. Ivy Baker Priest (who is treasurer of California), the court ruled, by a margin of 6 to 1, that the state's system of funding schools through local property taxes is unconstitutional because it violates the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause. Wrote the court: "We have determined that this funding scheme invidiously discriminates against the poor because it makes the quality of a child's education a function of the wealth of his parents and neighbors." Potentially, Serrano v. Priest is the most far-reaching court ruling on schooling since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which held that separate public educational facilities were inherently unequal. The case will probably be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court-with consequences that no one can predict.

Challenge to the System. The decision climaxed a three-year court battle begun in the name of John Serrano Jr., a twelve-year-old pupil, by a group of Los Angeles parents who challenged the state's property-tax system. (Their suit was filed by Derrick Bell, now Harvard University's first black law professor.) The system they challenged fairly well represents the pattern of educational financing in most states. About 56% of California's school funds come from property taxes raised at the local level, while the state kicks in about 35% (most of the balance is provided by the Federal Government). That ties better than half of a school's budget directly to the tax base in its district.

As the court pointed out, the tax base in California elementary school districts, which depends on the assessed valuation of real property within their borders, ranged from a low of $103 to a high of $952,156. For example, it cited the disparities between the Los Angeles County districts of Baldwin Park and Beverly Hills. The latter, of course, is one of the wealthiest communities in the country, while Baldwin Park is a blue-collar, civil service suburb boxed in by industrial tax havens. According to 1968-69 figures, homeowners in Baldwin Park paid a relatively high school-tax rate of $5.48 per $100 of assessed property valuation, while in plush residential Beverly Hills owners were paying only $2.38. Yet even though Baldwin Park received more state aid than Beverly Hills, each of its children got only $577.49 worth of education that year, while their counterparts in the wealthier suburb received $1,231.72 a head. Wrote the court: "We cannot agree that Baldwin Park residents care less about education than those in Beverly Hills solely because Baldwin Park spends less than $600 per child while Beverly Hills spends over $1,200."

Irrelevant Factor. The result, the court noted, is unwarranted inequity. "Affluent districts can have their cake and eat it too; they can provide a high-quality education for their children while paying lower taxes. Poor districts, by contrast, have no cake at all. To allot more educational dollars to the children of one district than to those of another merely because of the fortuitous presence of such property is to make the quality of a child's education dependent upon the location of private, commercial and industrial establishments. Surely, this is to rely on the most irrelevant of factors as the basis for educational financing."

In California, one immediate result of the decision may well be the revival of a bill-narrowly defeated last year-that would tax property uniformly throughout the state at $3.75 per $100 of assessed valuation and distribute the proceeds equally to schools at an estimated $800 per pupil (Hawaii already has a statewide tax system). Elsewhere, Serrano v. Priest gave impetus to suits already filed in several states and stirred Assemblyman Stanley Harwood of New York to announce last week that he would make a similar challenge to "require the state to undertake the basic costs of public education."

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