Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in Zuni Public School District No. 89 v. Department of Education
The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in Zuni Public School District No. 89 v. Department of Education, Docket No. 05-1508, a case in which two New Mexico school districts contend that their federal impact aid payments are being unfairly usurped by their state under federal regulations for the program. At issue is a provision of the federal Impact Aid Act that requires the U.S. secretary of education to administer a "disparity test" between districts in order to determine whether a state’s funding system is "equalized." If the disparity in per-pupil revenue between the state’s wealthiest and poorest districts, excluding the top and bottom 5%, is less than 25%, then the system is equalized and the state can take impact aid payments into account when calculating state aid to districts. New Mexico reduced the state aid to the two districts by 75% of their federal impact aid amounts. The districts argue the federal formula for determining which districts to exclude incorrectly identifies New Mexico as an "equalized" state, because the formula contains an extraneous step that eliminates districts based on their attendance numbers. In an argument that sometimes left the members of the Court openly puzzled about math concepts, the justices appeared more sympathetic to the school districts’ arguments, questioning lawyers for the Bush administration and New Mexico about whether Congress left enough ambiguity in the statute to allow the secretary to adopt the formula. "[Revenue] is only ‘per-pupil’ when you're dealing with an aggregation of the pupils," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Leigh M. Manasevit, a special assistant attorney general arguing on behalf of New Mexico. "I would have thought a reference to per-pupil numbers suggests you're grouping according to district." The chief justice added, "If you're going to break it down pupil by pupil, which is what you do, you don't have a per-pupil number associated with each pupil. You have a number."
Education Week
By Andrew Trotter & Jessica L. Tonn
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: Background on the case and the transcript of the arguments are below.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Zuni Public Sch. Dist. No. 89 v. Dep’t of Educ.]
[Supreme Court transcript in Zuni Public Sch. Dist. No. 89 v. Dep’t of Educ.]