School 94501/94502

In order to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to protect Alameda education as we know it, we must commit BOTH (1) to pass Measure H on June 3 AND (2) to continue to fight the long battle at the state level to fix the broken school funding system.

In my last substantive posting here, I criticized as naive and reckless the idea that we could vote down Measure H and instead gamble everything on a “Sacramento-only” strategy. (I don’t know of a single Measure H supporter who is in favor of a “Measure H-only” strategy, but that would be an equally irresponsible approach.) We can and we must both pass Measure H and continue to fight Sacramento.

In this post, I’ll mention some new information about state level advocacy and share an important breakthrough in our efforts at bringing litigation to force reform of the state’s school finance system.

New Information about Efforts at State Level Advocacy

Some anti-Measure H opponents have complained that no one has tried to do anything to fix the system on the state level. In fact, as I wrote last week, many of us already have been working hard for years to fix that broken system and will continue to do so (probably also for years).

This past week, even more information has become available on this issue so that any voter who cares to make an informed decision on Measure H now can easily educate him/herself that work and progress are happening on the long-term challenge of state level reform. I hope that any voters with questions or doubts on this issue will read the updates posted in the past week on this topic by the Alameda Education Foundation, AUSD board member Mike McMahon (see “Storm the Bastille“), and Keep Alameda Schools Excellent, in the extremely informative FAQ section of the KASE website.

AEF ’s update is particularly informative and important. (I have borrowed the title of this post “leave no stone unturned” from AEF.) As AEF points out, some state level advocacy “is of the up-front-and-noisy variety, while some of it is behind the scenes and so less readily apparent to the general public.” AEF also reminds us that “Measure H is the answer to the very immediate (and desperate) need in Alameda’s schools to find the money to pay for beloved programs, teachers, and staff next year. That’s because we know our legislators cannot change something as complicated-and politically sensitive-as a funding formula before June, when the district has to submit its final budget for 2008-09.”

Litigation Project Update: A Breakthrough

Speaking of work that is “behind the scenes and so less readily apparent to the general public,” I do at last have some good news to share about “the litigation project” that Ann Casper and I have been working on seriously for more than a year.

Heretofore, at the request of the lawyers with whom we have done the most work, we had agreed to keep confidential much of what has been happening and have done so. (That pledge of confidentiality is still in place for much of what we have done that I am not writing about).

Still, I can now report that Ann and I met last week with a lawyer who is willing and able to move ahead with organizing and filing just the sort of lawsuit we have hoped for that would force changes to the state school finance system. I think it is fair to characterize our meeting last week as a significant breakthrough. Although this is all still far from a “done deal,” the probability of a major school finance reform lawsuit actually happening is higher right now than it has been at any time since the Williams class action case was filed in 2000.

The strategy we discussed with the lawyer last week would involve (1) a consortium of school districts as one group/class of plaintiffs, (2) a group of parents/students as another group (probably through forming a new parent organization dedicated just to this project), and (3) a group of teachers. Counsel for these three groups would be partly fee-based and partly pro bono.

One of the next steps for this strategy to work and for this possibility to become a reality is to organize these three groups. That process is moving ahead. One part of the organizing I am hoping to help accomplish in the next few weeks is to form a parent group willing and able to participate in any case that might actually be filed in the coming months. For various reasons, a new parent group is probably preferable to an existing group. The new group would be called something like “Parents and Students for Adequate School Funding,” though if anyone has a particularly catchy idea for a name (and a catchy acronym that would follow from the name), please let me know. In the coming weeks, you’ll surely hear more about all of this. For now, I thought I’d share this good news.

I don’t want to be unduly optimistic about this development, since we still have a very long way to go on the litigation project, there are still many obstacles to overcome for this all to happen, and, even under a “best case scenario,” this will take months more to organize (and would take years to prevail on in court once filed). Nonetheless, finding a capable lawyer who wants to take the case is a big deal.  It turns out there might be something good under that lawsuit stone.