San Antonio Independent School District v Rodriguez Appendix for Brief Amici Curiae

    /U, g

IN  T H E

Supreme Court of tfje Urnteb g>tate$
October Term, 1971

No. 71-1332

SAN A N T O N IO  IN D E P E N D E N T S C H O O L  D IS­
T R IC T , et a l,

Appellants,
vs.

D E M E T R IO  P. R O D R IG U E Z , et a l,
Appellees.

ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

APPENDIX
FOR

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE: RICHARD M. CLOWES, SUPER- 
INTENDENT OF SCHOOLS OF THE COUNTY OF LOS 
ANGELES, HAROLD J. OSTLY, TAX COLLECTOR AND 
TREASURER OF THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES: EL 
SEGUNDO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT; GLENDALE 
UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT; SAN MARINO UNIFIED 
SCHOOL DISTRICT; LONG BEACH UNIFIED SCHOOL 
DISTRICT; SOUTH BAY UNION HIGH SCHOOL DIS­
TRICT; BEVERLY HILLS UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT; 
AND SANTA MONICA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, ALL 
OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY.

JO H N  D . M A H A R G ,
County Counsel 

JAM ES W . BRIGGS,
Division Chief, Schools Division 

D O N O V A N  M . M A IN ,
Deputy County Counsel 

648 Hall of Administration 
500 West Temple Street 
Los Angeles, California 90012 
(213) 625-3611, Ext. 65643 

Attorneys for Amici Curiae.

W E S T E R N  P R IN T IN G  C O M P A N Y , W H IT T IE R ----- O X B O W  3 * 1 7 2 2



APPENDIX '“ A”

INTERDISTRICT INEQUALITIES IN SCHOOL 
FINANCING: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF 
SERRANO v. PRIEST  AND ITS PROGENY.

S t e p h e n  R. G o l d s t e i n  +

Rarely has a state supreme court decision received 
such extensive publicity and public comment as the 
recent California Supreme Court opinion in Serrano v. 
Priest,3 concerning the constitutionality of interdistrict 
disparities in financing California public school dis­
tricts. Indeed, one might have to go back to the United 
States Supreme Court reapportionment cases to find 
a decision of any court that has been as extensively dis­
cussed in the press as has Serrano. .Most significantly, 
the press comment seems to have been uniformly af­
firmative. The Serrano result has been popularly hailed 
as rightly egalitarian and a significant, if not the sig­
nificant, step in the struggle for better education in 
urban areas.2 Even those editorial writers who have 
traditionally been proponents of judicial restraint have 
refrained from commenting adversely upon the court’s 
decision invalidating California’s public school financ­
ing system.

tAssociate Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania. A.B. 1959, L.L.B. 
1962, University of Pennsylvania, Member, Pennsylvania Bar.

*5 Cal. 3d 584, 487 P.2d 1241, 96 Cal. Rptr. 601 (1971).

'2See, e.g., N.Y. Times, Sept. 1, 1971, at 17, col. 1: id., Sept. 2, 1971, at 
32, col. 1; at 55, cols. 1, 2; id., Sept 5, 1971, § 4, at 7, col. 1; at 10, col.3.



Ill part this absence of adverse comment may be 
attributable to the fact that it was the California Su­
preme Court and not the United States Supreme Court 
that decided the case. Yet, the decision’s impact is 
clearly not confined to California. The California 
school finance system is similar in effect to the systems 
used in 49 of the 50 states/ and the court avowedly 
rested its decision on federal equal protection grounds.4

3Hawaii is the only state without local school district control of education. 
H a w a ii R e v . L a w s  §§296-2, 298-2 (1968).

4The court specifically rejected the argument that the California financing 
system violated art. XX, §5 of the California Constitution, which provides for 
“ a system of common schools.” It then stated: “ Having disposed of these 
preliminary matters, we take up the chief contention underlying plaintiffs' 
complaint, namely that the California public school financing scheme violates 
the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States 
Constitution.” 5 Cal. 3d at 596, 487 P.2d at 1249, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 609. 
Despite having thus based its decision on federal constitutional grounds, the 
court, in a puzzling footnote, id. at 596 n .ll, 487 P.2d at 1249 n .ll, 96 
Cal. Rptr. at 609 n .l l ,  then referred to 2 provisions of the California Con­
stitution requiring that “ [a ]11 laws of a general nature shall have a uniform 
operation,”  C a l . C o n s t , art. I, §11, and prohibiting “ special privileges or 
immunities,”  id. art. I, §21. The court went on to state that:

We have construed these provisions as “substantially the equivalent” of 
the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Fed­
eral Constitution. (Dept, of Mental Hygiene v. Kirchner (1965) 62 Cal.
2d 586, 588, 43 Cal. Rptr. 329, 400 P.2d 321.) Consequently, our 
analysis of plaintiffs’ equal protection contention is also applicable to 
their claim under these state constitutional provisions.

Id.
Following this, there was no further mention of the California Constitu­

tion in the opinion and almost all authorities cited concern federal law. The 
court also devoted considerable effort to avoiding the argument that the 
federal constitutional issues has been foreclosed by the United States Supreme 
Court summary affirmances in Mclnnis v. Shapiro, 293 F. Supp. 327 (N.D. 
111. 1968), aff’ d mem. sub nom. Mclnnis v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 322 (1969), and 
Burruss v. Wilkerson, 310 F. Supp. 572 (W.D. Va. 1969), aff’d mem.] 397 
U.S. 44 (1970). The California Supreme Court, of course, would not be limited 
by a United States Supreme Court interpretation of the California Constitution.

The footnote quoted above, and the explicit citation to Kirchner, however, 
raise the issue whether, despite its express reliance on the Federal Consti­
tution, the court has not also relied on the California Constitution in a way 
that precludes United States Supreme Court review.

In Kirchner, the Califoria Supreme Court held unconstitutional a state 
statute relating to liability for the care and maintenance of mentally ill per­
sons in state institutions. 60 Cal. 2d 716, 388 P.2d 720, 36 Cal. Rptr. 488 
(1964). The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari but vacated 
and remanded the case to the California court on the grounds that the Cal­
ifornia opinoin was unclear as to whether it was based on the federal or state



It has also been expressly followed by a federal dis­
trict court in Minnesota in denying a motion to dis­
miss5 and by a three-judge district court in Texas in 
holding that state’s financing scheme unconstitutional." 
While it is clear, at least at this time, that the Serrano 
decision itself will not be reviewed by the United States 
Supreme Court,7 * there are many other interdistrict

consitutions or both, and that the United States Supreme Court would not 
have jurisdiction unless the federal Constitution had been the sole basis for 
the _ decision, or the state constitution had been interpreted under what the 
California court deemed the compulsion of the Federal Constitution. 380 U.S. 
194 (1965). On remand, the California Supreme Court stated that although 
C a l . C o n s t , art I, §§11 & 21 were generally thought to be “ substantially 
the equivalent”  of the federal aqual protection clause, the court was “ inde­
pendently constrained” in its result by these sections of the state constitution. 
The court stated that it had not acted “ solely by compulsion of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, either directly or in construing or applying state law . ”  62 
Cal. 2d 586, 588, 400 P.2d 321, 322, 43 Cal. Rptr. 329, 330 (1965).

Although the issue is not completely free from doubt, the California Su­
preme Court in Serrano may have written an opinion expressly based on federal 
law yet at the same time insulated from review by the United States Supreme 
Court.

®Van Dusartz v. Hatfield, 334 F. Supp. 870 (D. Minn. 1971).
^Rodriguez v. San Antonio Ind. School Dist., 337 F. Supp. 280 (W.D. 

Tex. 1971). Procedurally, Rodriguez has developed further than Serrano, as 
the court there, after a hearing, declared the Texas financing scheme un­
constitutional and permanently enjoined the defendants, the State Commis­
sioner of Education, and the members of the State Board of Education, from 
enforcing it. The court, however, stayed its mandate and retained jurisdiction 
for 2 years:

in order to afford the defendants and the Legislature an opportunity to 
take all steps reasonably feasible to make the school system comply with 
the applicable law . . . .

The Court retains jurisdiction of this action to take such further steps 
as may be necessary to implement both the purpose and spirit of this 
order, in the event the Legislature fails to act within the time stated . . . .

Id. at 286. For retention of jurisdiction the court cited cases of judicially im­
posed reapportionment plans.

7See note 4 supra. In addition to the problem of the independent state 
ground for the Serrano decision, it is clear that the Supreme Court cannot 
review it at this time because it is not a final judgment. See 28 U.S C. §1257
(1 9 7 0 ).



inequality cases in the process of litigation,8 at least 
one of which will soon present the United States Su­
preme Court with the Serrano problem.9

The primary reason for the favorable reception of 
Serrano is probably the growing public eagerness for 
its result. Unlike many other societal problems in ed­
ucation and other areas, the concept of fiscal equality 
in education is perceived as unambiguously good. It 
does not appear to involve the competing views of 
equality prevalent in desegregation and community 
control issues. Nor does it represent the significant 
clash between the values of equality and liberty that 
the desegregation and community control issues may 
present. The only visible liberty being curtailed is local 
economic self-determination, a value currently of low 
priority in our society when balanced against the prom­
ise of improving education for the poor and racial 
minorities. Fiscal equality also holds out the promise 
of improving education for the poor and racial minor­
ities, without raising the fears of personal adverse ef­
fects on the white middle-class family aroused by other 
proposed policies, such as desegregation. Fiscal equali-

8Also pending before a 3-judge court is the constitutionality of the Florida 
school financing system. See Askew v. Hargrave, 401 U.S. 476 (1971), vacat­
ing per curiam Hargrave v. Kirk, 313 F. Supp. 944 (MX). Fla. 1970). Recent 
state court decisions that followed Serrano are: Hollins v. Shofstall, No. C- 
253652 (Super. Ct. Maricopa County, Ariz. Jan. 13, 1972); Robinson v. Ca­
hill, 118 N.J. Super. 223, 287 A.2d 187 (1972); Sweetwater County Planning 
Comm, for the Organization of School Dists, v. Hinkle, 491 P.2d 1234 (Wyo. 
1971). In disagreement with Serrano is Spano v. Board of Educ., 328 N.Y. 
S.2d 229 (Sup. Ct. 1972). The issue is now before the court in more than half 
the states. See Wall St. J., Mar. 2, 1972, at 1, col. 6.

9It appears that the decision in Rodriguez is immediately appealable to 
the United States Supreme Court. See 28 U.S.C. §1253 (1970). If appealed, 
it would presumably be heard in the October term, 1972.



t,y involves the movement of inanimate dollars, not live 
children.10

Finally, fiscal equality corresponds to a basic 
American belief that more money, or money distributed 
more wisely, can solve major societal problems such as 
the current state of public education, and that all so­
ciety need do is to have the will to so spend or dis­
tribute it. In Daniel P. Moynihan’s terms, Serrano 
leads one to hope that what may have been considered 
a “ knowledge problem”  is indeed a “ political”  one, 
or better yet, a judicial one.11

Serrano is unquestionably sound as a matter of ab­
stract egalitarian philosophy. Nevertheless, there are 
many difficulties presented by its legal analysis. More­
over, it is not at all clear that the practical effect of the 
decision will be to improve the quality of public educa­
tion generally, or the quality of urban public education 
in particular.

■— 5—

lOThe Serrano result and metropolitan desegregation, e.g., Bradley v. School 
Bd., 40 U.S.L.W. 2446 (E.D. Va. Jan. 5, 1972), can be viewed as alternative 
methods of improving the educational quality of urban minority groups, to the 
extent that the argument for metropolitan desegregation rests on a desire to 
give the black urban poor access to the tax base of their more affluent white 
suburban neighbors. Compare Hobson v. Hansen, 327 F. Supp. 844 (D.D.C. 
1971), with Johnson v, San Francisco Unified School Dist., No. C-70 1331 
SAW (N.D. Cal. June 2, 1971). See also Spencer v. Kugler, 40 U.S.L.W. 
3333 (U.S. Jan. 17, 1972); United States v. Board of School Comm’rs 332 
F. Supp. 655 (S.D. Ind. 1971).

u Moynihan, Can Courts and Money Dc ft?, N.Y. Times, Jan. 10, 1972. 
§E (Annual Education Review), at 1, col. 3; id. at 24, col. 1.



6

I . S c h o o l  D i s t r i c t  I n e q u a l i t y  a n d  t h e  

Serrano R e s p o n s e

A. The Court’s Response to Interdistrict 
Financing Differentials

As is true with every state except Hawaii, over 90% 
of California’s public school funds derive from a com­
bination of school district real property taxes and state 
aid based largely on sales or income taxation. Histori­
cally the state aid, or ‘ ‘ subvention, ’ ’ has been superim­
posed on the basic system of locally raised revenue. Al­
though the state aid component of educational expen­
ditures has been generally increasing as a percentage 
of the total expenditures, the local component has re­
mained dominant, California is typical in having total 
educational expenditures consist of 55.7 percent local 
property taxes and 35.5 percent state aid.12

The local component is a product of a locality’s tax 
base (primarily the assessed valuation of real property 
within its borders) and its tax rate, Tax bases in Cali­
fornia, as elsewhere, vary widely throughout the state. 
Tax rates also vary from district to district.

12ln addition, federal funds account for 6.1% and other sources for 2.7%. 
These figures and others given for California in this Article are taken from the 
court’s opinion in Serrano. 5 Cal. 3d at 591 n.2, 487 P.2d at 1246 n.2 96 
Cal. Rptr. at 606 n.2.

In discussig expenditure differentials, the Serrano court did not indicate 
whether or not its figures included federal revenues. Other authorities have 
excluded federal revenues from these calculations. This author has elsewhere 
questioned the validity of this exclusion. See Goldstein, Book Review, 59 C a l if . 
L. R ev . 302, 303-04 (1971). Nationwide, approximately 52% of all schooi 
revenue is collected locally, and from 97-98% of local tax revenue is derived 
from property taxes. Briley, Variation between School District Revenue and 
Financial Ability, in St a t u s  an d  I m p a c t  of Ed u c ation al  F in a n c e  Pr o ­
gram s  49-50 (R. Johns, K. Alexander & D. Stoilar eds. 1971) (National 
Educational Finance Project vol. 4). In California, all local school revenues 
are raised by property taxation. See C a l . Ed u c . C ode §§20701-06 (1969)



-7—

Tiie state component of school expenditures is gen­
erally distributed through a flat grant system, a foun­
dation system, or a combination of the two. The flat 
grant is the earliest and simplest form of subvention, 
consisting of an absolute number of dollars distributed 
to each school district on a per-pupil or other-unit stan­
dard. Foundation plans are more complicated and have 
a number of variants. In its simplest form, a founda­
tion plan consists of a state guarantee to a district of 
a minimum level of available dollars per student, if the 
district taxes itself at a specified minimum rate. The 
state aid makes up the difference between local collec­
tions at the specified rate and this guaranteed amount. 
I f  the actual tax rate is greater than the specified rate, 
the funds raised by the additional taxes are retained 
by the locality but do not affect the amount of state aid.

Finally, there are combinations of flat grants and 
foundation plans. Under one form of combination plan 
the flat grant is added to whatever foundation aid is 
due to the district:

State Aid =  [guaranteed amount — local collec­
tion at specified rate] + flat grant.

Under the other combination system, the flat grant is 
added to the local collection in initially calculating the 
foundation grant:

State Aid =  [guaranteed amount — (local col­
lection at specified rate + flat grant)] + flat 
grant.



Under tliis approach, a district that would qualify for 
a state foundation grant equal to, or in excess of, the 
flat grant does not in effect receive the flat grant. That 
grant is superfluous when it serves only to bring a dis­
trict up to the foundation level, because a district is 
always guaranteed the foundation level in any case. 
The full benefit of the flat grant goes only to those dis­
tricts where the local collection at the specified rate 
equals or exceeds the foundation guarantee.

The latter combination plan is the system employed 
in California.13 The flat grant is $125 per pupil. The 
foundation minimum, based on a tax rate of 1.0 percent 
for elementary school districts and 0.8 percent for high 
school districts,14 is $355 for each elementary school 
pupil and $488 for each high school student, subject to 
specified minor exceptions. An additional state pro­
gram of “ supplemental aid”  subsidizes particularly 
poor school districts that, are willing to set local tax 
rates above a certain statutory level. An elementary 
school district with an assessed valuation of $12,500 or 
less per pupil may obtain up to $125 more for each 
child under this plan. A high school district whose as­
sessed valuation does not exceed $24,500 per pupil can

18As noted, this results in the quirk that the full effects of the flat grant 
are available only to those districts whose revenue at the prescribed rate ex­
ceeds the foundation guarantee. There would seem to be no rational basis for 
this result. The Serrano court, however, did no more than mention this fact 
and there is no indication that the opinion rested on it.

14This is simply a computational tax rate used to measure the relative tax 
bases of the different districts. It does not necessarily relate to the actual rates 
levied.



receive a supplement of up to $72 per pupil if it taxes 
at a sufficiently high rate.15

Although the foundation plan does help to equalize 
available educational funds throughout the state, the 
relatively low foundation guarantee nevertheless allows 
significant disparities among school districts. The Ser­
rano court cited the following statistics for the 1969- 
1970 school year for district per-pupil educational ex­
penditures :

Elementary 
Low $ 407 
Median 672
High 2586

H igh School 
'$  722 

898 
1767

Unified16 
$ 612 

766 
2414

Statistics cited by the court for assessed valuations per 
pupil also reflected the disparities:

15There are other minor provisions in the state subvention system. Districts 
that maintain “ unnecessary small schools”  receive $10 per pupil in their 
foundation guarantee, a sum intended to reduce class sizes in elementary 
schools. Unified districts (those which contain both elementary and secondary 
schools) receive $20 more per pupil in foundation grants. In addition, a spe­
cial program attempts to provide equalization in districts included in re­
organization plans that were rejected by the voters. It gives the poorer dis­
tricts in the reorganization the effect of the reorganization to the limited 
extent of levying a tax areawide, of 1.0% in elementary districts and 0.8% 
in high school districts. The resulting revenue is then distributed among the 
individual districts according to the ratio of each district’s foundation level to 
the areawide total revenue. Thus, in these rare circumstances of voter-re­
jected reorganization plans, poorer districts share in the higher tax bases of weal­
thier districts in their area. The districts are, of course, free to tax themselves 
above the 1.0% or 0.8% level and retain all additional revenue. 5 Cal. 3d 
at 593 n.8, 487 P.2d at 1247 n.8, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 607 n.8.

!«W . at 593 n.9, 487 P.2d at 1247 n.9, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 607 n.9.



10

Low
Median
High

Elementary
$ 103

19,600 
952,156

High School17 
$ 11,959 

41,300 
349,093

The complaint in Serrano set forth two main causes 
of action. The first was that of plaintiff school children 
residing in all school districts except the one that “ af­
fords the greatest educational opportunity,”  who al­
leged that:

As a direct result of the financing scheme . . . sub­
stantial disparities in the quality and extent of 
availability of educational opportunities exist and 
are perpetuated among the several school districts 
of the State . . . .  The educational opportunities 
made available to children attending public schools 
in the Districts, including plaintiff children, are 
substantially inferior to the educational opportuni­
ties made available to children attending public 
schools in many other districts in the State . . . ,18

The financing scheme was alleged, therefore, to violate 
the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amend­
ment and various clauses of the California Constitu­
tion.

17Id. Note that these figures and those in the text accompanying note 16 
supra, represent the extremes and thus may be skewed, as extremes often are. 
In this case a major skewing mechanism may be an abnormally low number 
of public school students in a given district. Even outside the extremes, how­
ever, the discrepancies in California are substantial. These assessed valuation 
per pupil figures also assume uniform assessment practices. This assumption 
was not discussed by the court. The discrepancies were much less substantial 
in Texas but the system was invalidated nonetheless. See Rodriguez v. San 
Antonio Ind. School Dist., 337 F. Supp. 280 (W.D. Tex. 1971).

185 Cal. 3d at 590. 487 P.2d at 1244, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 604.



11

The second cause of action, brought by the parents 
of the school children, as taxpayers, incorporated all 
the allegations of the first claim. It went on to allege 
that as a direct result of the financing scheme, plain­
tiffs were required to pay a higher tax rate than tax­
payers in many other school districts to obtain for 
their children the same or lesser educational opportun­
ities.

The complaint sought: (1) a declaration that the 
system as it existed was unconstitutional; (2) an order 
directing state administrative officials to reallocate 
school funds to remedy the system’s constitutional in­
firmities ; and (3) retention of jurisdiction by the trial 
court so that it could restructure the system if the leg­
islature failed to do so within a reasonable time19 The 
trial court sustained a general demurrer to the com­
plaint and the action was dismissed. The dismissal of 
the complaint for failing to set forth a cause of action 
was appealed to the California Supreme Court.

The California Supreme Court stated the issue in 
the first line of its opinion:

We are called upon to determine whether the 
California public school financing system, with its 
substantial dependence on local property taxes and 
resultant wide disparities in school revenue, vio­
lates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth 
Amendment.20 10

10Id. at 591. 487 P.2d at 1245, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 605. 
20Id. at 589, 487 P.2d at 1244, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 604.



—12—

The court immediately went on to hold:

We have determined that this funding scheme in­
vidiously discriminates against the poor because 
it makes the quality of a child’s education a func­
tion of the wealth of his parents and neighbors. 
Recognizing as we must that the right to an edu­
cation in our public schools is a fundamental in­
terest which cannot be conditioned on wealth, we 
can discern no compelling state purpose necessitat­
ing the present method of financing. We have con­
cluded, therefore, that such a system cannot with­
stand constitutional challenge and must fall before 
the equal protection clause.21

In so holding, the California court employed the 
“'new equal protection”  analysis. Under this doctrine, 
certain t y p e s  of legislative classification require a 
higher level of state justification to pass judicial scrut­
iny than is required under the traditional “ rational 
basis”  equal protection test. This doctrine holds that 
if a suspect classification is employed, and the classi­
fication pertains to a fundamental interest,22 then the

21Id.

22It is unclear whether the court regarded the fundamental interest and 
suspect classification tests as operating in conjunction with each other as stated 
in the text or as operating independently. Compare id. at 612 487 P.2d at 
1261, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 621, with 5 Cal. 3d at 604, 487 P.2d at 1257, 96 
Cal, Rptr. at 615. To the extent the court suggested that either test, operating 
independently, would trigger the “ special scrutiny”  review of state action, it 
appears to be an inaccurate view of the present state of the law as applied to 
state actions other than racial classifications.

The invariable formulation of the doctrine as applied to wealth classifica­
tions requires both wealth classification and impairment of a fundamental in­
terest in some varying combination. See Bullock v. Carter, 40 U.S.L.W. 4211, 
4214 (U.S. Feb. 24, 1972); Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U.S. 471, 519-30 
(1970) (Marshall, J., dissenting). But see Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 
658 (Harlan, J., dissenting.) See generally J. C o o n s , W. C l u n e  & S. Su g ar - 
m a n , Private  W e a l t h  a n d  P u blic  Ed u cation  339-446 (1970) [hereinafter 
cited as Private  W e a l t h  an d  P u blic  Ed u c a t io n ].



13—

classification violates the equal protection clause un­
less it is necessitated by a compelling state purpose. A 
fuller discussion of the Serrano court’s use of this doc­
trine follows.

B. The Choice of a Standard of Equality: 
Response to Activist Legal Scholarship

The most striking element in the California Su­
preme Court’s holding was its reliance on the relation­
ship between the wealth of a school district and its ed­
ucational expenditures. By “ wealth”  the court meant 
taxable wealth (property tax basis23 * * * *) per pupil o'r other 
unit. Yet, as stated above, the local component of school 
financing is a product of taxable wealth and tax rate. 
A  district’s expenditures may be low because it is low 
in taxable wealth or because it chooses to tax itself at 
a low rate, or both. Why, then, did the court focus on 
wealth differences as the constitutional vice, rather 
than on disparities in expenditures, regardless of 
cause %

23Serrano and its progeny have been predicated on the assumption of the
exclusive use of the real estate property tax for local education financing. As
stated in note 12 .supra, however, nationwide property taxes constitute 97-98% 
of local taxes for education and thus are almost the exclusive but are not the 
exclusive means of local financing. Indeed, by 1968-1969, 22 states and the 
District of Columbia authorized the use of local nonproperty taxes by local 
school districts. A lt e r n a tiv e  Program s  for Fin a n c in g  Edu cation  186
(1971) (National Educational Finance Project vol. 5). While this still 
amounted to less than 3% of local education taxes nationwide, in a given state 
the amount could be sufficiently significant that the Serrano analysis premised 
on exclusive real estate taxation would be inapplicable. For example, in Penn­
sylvania local nonproperty taxes in 1968-1969 produced a mean revenue per 
pupil of $101.30 in central city districts. Id. 187.

Local nonproperty taxes include occupational, utility, and other excise 
taxes, as well as local sales and income taxes. Tax bases for such taxes would 
be much more difficult to calculate than is a given locality’s real property tax 
base.



14—

To understand this, one must know something about 
the legal literature that predated Serrano. The litera­
ture in this field, particularly the book Private Wealth 
and Public Education,24 exemplifies a current wave of 
consciously activist scholarship, written with an avowed 
bias, and aimed at producing specific legal results. This 
new breed of writers, not content with pure scholar­
ship, actively engages in the litigation process to ac­
complish their aims.23 This activist legal scholarship— 
of a very high caliber—-produced the legal formulations 
manifested in Serrano™

Serrano apparently adopted as the constitutional 
ride what was denominated as Proposition 1 in Private 
Wealth and Public EducationP “ The quality of public 
education may not be a function of wealth other than 
the wealth of the state as a whole.” 28 Proposition 1

24Supra note 22.
25Coons and Sugarman, for example, filed amicus briefs in Serrano and 

Rodriguez.
28Although the court acknowledged its reliance on Coons, Clune & Sugar- 

man by citations throughout the opinion, it cited a law review article, Coons 
Clune & Sugarman, Educational Opportunity. A Workable Constitutional Test 
for State Financial Structures, 57 C a l if . L. R e v . 305 (1969), rather than the 
more comprehensive analysis in Private  W e a l t h  and  P ublic  Ed u c a tio n , 
supra note 22. The reason for this is not clear. This may reflect only the 
opinion writer’s relative access to the two works. It may also reflect the court’s 
sensitivity to the reader’s relative access to the two works. Finally, it might 
be suggested that it represents a possible reflection of the difference in esteem 
in California, between the California Law Review and the Harvard University 
Press.

27The following discussion of Proposition 1 and district power equalizing 
is based upon, and some parts are taken entirely from, an earlier analysis of 
Private Wealth and Public Education by this author. Goldstein, Book Review 
59 C a l if . L. R e v . 302, 304-10 (1 9 7 1 ).

28Private  W e a l t h  an d  P u blic  Edu cation ,  supra note 22, at 2 (emphasis 
omitted). Proposition 1 is, however, never directly quoted by the Serrano 
Court. The federal court in Van Dusartz, 334 F. Supp. 870 (D. Minn. 1971) 
which expressly relied on Serrano. did quote Proposition 1 and explicitly ac­
cepted it as the constitutional standard. Id. at 872 & n.l. Somewhat less



itself was a response to prior debate about interdistrict 
disparities in educational offerings. Recently there has 
been increased concern with inequalities in government, 
services, especially as they affect the poor. In particu­
lar, society has become increasingly concerned with 
the deplorable condition of urban public education. It 
has been argued that a major cause of this condition is 
the relative lack of resources available to urban school 
districts as compared to their more affluent suburban 
neighbors. Moreover, there has been increased recogni­
tion that plans for improving urban education through 
such alternatives as integration, decentralization and 
community control, or compensatory education are, in 
the final result, highly dependent on the availability 
of greater resources for urban school districts.

Although the exact relationship between financially 
Poor school districts and poor people, particularly the 
urban poor, is unclear,29 the existence of large wealth 
discrepancies among school districts is undeniable. The 
disparity in the quality of education, as conventionally 
measured, between urban and suburban school districts
clearly the 3-judge court in Rodriguez seemed to adopt Proposition 1 as the 
constitutional rule.

One caveat must be stated regarding the Serrano court's acceptance of 
Proposition 1 as the constitutional test. As will be discussed at length text 
accompanying notes 30-44 infra, Proposition 1 and Serrano do not require 
equality of expenditures. Neither, however, is Proposition 1 satisfied by equality 
of expenditures. If equal expenditures were achieved by differential rates ap­
plied to differential tax bases, that is, lower tax base districts achieving the 
same revenue level by employing higher rates, Proposition 1 would not be satis­
fied. At this point Proposition 1 leaves education as its concern and becomes 
completely taxpayer oriented. Despite the taxpayer orientation in Serrano, see 
text accompanying notes 86-9! infra, it is unlikely that the Serrano court 
would go this far. Throughout the opinion, the court emphasized differential 
educational expenditures.

29See notes 65-75 infra & accompanying text.



is also apparent. Thus the existing system of education­
al financing has been increasingly condemned as in­
tolerable. However, there has existed substantial dis­
agreement on methods of relief. Opponents of judicial 
intervention have argued against court action to in­
validate the current system: first, for lack of a work­
able judicial standard ; secondly, because an equality 
concept might result in a downward leveling of expen­
ditures when the real need is to improve low quality; 
thirdly, because judicial relief would result in centra­
lization of educational financing; and fourthly, because 
an equality requirement that prevented local school 
expenditures above the state norm would be either 
unworkable or would result in substantial middle class 
exodus from the public schools.30

Proposition 1 was an avowed attempt to respond to 
these criticisms. By adopting it, the California Su­
preme Court has apparently limited its decision to 
wealth-derived educational differentials and has not 
required equal expenditures statewide. On this basis 
of decision, there are a number of alternative school 
financing systems that would meet the court’s constitu­
tional standard. Among these is abolition of local school 
districts and their replacement with a completely state­
wide system. Short of that, centralized state financing 80

80See Kurland, Equal Educational Opportunity. The Limits of Constitu­
tional Jurisprudence Undefined, 35 U.C h i . L. R ev . 583 (1968). For the 
views of the proponents of judicial intervention, see A, W is e , R ic h  Sc h o o l s , 
Poor Sc h o o l s : T h e  P ro m ise  of Eq u a l  Ed u c a tio n a l  O p p o r t u n it y  143^ 
59 (1968); Horowitz & Neitring, Equal Protection Aspects of Inequalities in 
Public Education and Public Assistance Programs From Place to Place With­
in a State, 15 U.C.L.A. R e v . 787 (1968) : Kirp, The Poor, the Schools, and 
Equal Protection, 38 H a r v . Ed u c . R ev . 635 (1968).



17-

that raises and distributes all funds could be coupled 
with local district administration of the schools. Cen­
tralized financing, however, is not required under the 
Serrano rule invalidating only wealth-derived differ­
entials. A  general school redistricting' that equalized 
wealth among school districts would satisfy the deci­
sion and at the same time allow the present system of 
financing and administration to continue. Finally, 
there is the innovative suggestion proposed in Private 
Wealth and Public Education—district power equaliz­
ing—a system t h a t  allows differential expenditures 
among school districts, while removing the effect of 
differential tax bases on these expenditures.

Under district power equalizing, existing school dis­
tricts would have funds available for education based 
on their tax rate regardless of their tax base. A school 
district would be free to choose any tax rate it desired 
and its available funds—defined as “ x dollars per edu­
cational unit” —would be established by the state for 
any given tax rate. In a simplified model, a district 
power equalizing scheme might appear as follows:

Tax Hate Available Funds 
1 % $ 400 per educational task unit

2 /a
3

2
600
800

1000
1200

A district with a low tax base whose chosen tax rate 
produced less revenue than the state prescribed amount



18

wpuld receive state funds to make up the difference. 
A  district that produced more revenue than the state 
prescribed amount at its chosen rate would be required 
to pay the excess to the state.

The scheme of power equalizing as a means to satis­
fy  the requirements of Proposition 1 has been attacked 
on equalitarian grounds. It requires merely that dis­
trict wealth disparities be eliminated as a factor in 
financing education, thus still permitting districts to 
spend more by taxing more. What is in fact required, 
it is argued, is statewide equality of learning oppor­
tunity to the extent achievable by statewide financing.81 
The Serrano decision is subject to the same attack in­
sofar as the court adopts an equal wealth formula, ra­
ther than an equal expenditure formula.

It is not indisputably clear, however, that the 
court has rejected th e  equalization o f  expenditures 
formula. Although the language quoted above, a n d  
other statements in the opinion seem to accept the 
equal wealth standard, it might well be argued that 
the court decided only the facts before it—that the 
existing financing scheme was unconstitutional—and 
did not go so far as to endorse an equal wealth stan­
dard or reject the argument that an equalization of ex­
penditures standard is constitutionally required. In­
deed, in response to an argument that autonomous lo­
cal decisionmaking was so important a value that it

31See, e.g., Silard & White. Intrastate Inequalities in Public Education: 
The Case for Judicial Relief Under the Equal Protection Clause, 1970 Wis 
L. R e v . 7, 26-28, 30.



19-

justified the existing system, the court stated: “ We 
need not decide whether such decentralized financial 
decision-making is a compelling state interest, since 
under the present financing system, such fiscal free 
will is a cruel illusion for the poor school districts.” 32 
Other evidence of the court’s possible acceptance of the 
equal expenditure formula as being constitutionally 
required is its specific recognition that many of the 
values of local choice could still be preserved under a 
spending equalization formula that centralized financ­
ing but localized administration of schools.

The court’s possible failure to rule out a constitu­
tional command of expenditure equalization may also 
be explained by the fact that tax base, not tax rate, is 
the main determinant of local educational expendi­
tures. Available statistics, in California and elsewhere, 
indicate that districts with smaller tax bases, such as 
Baldwin Park, tax themselves at higher rates than do 
richer districts, such as Beverly Hills, even though 
their total yield is not as great,33 Therefore, the Ser­
rano court may have assumed that Proposition 1, which 
removes the wealth factor, would produce generally 
equal offerings among school districts, and thus left 
until another day the issue of what happens if it does 
not.

These reasons, however, are not sufficient to ex­
plain the very strong equal wealth emphasis in the

325 Cal. 3d at 611, 487 P.2d at 1260, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 620.
ssid . ;  Private  W e a l t h  and  Public  Ed u c a tio n , supra note 22, at 127-50. 

See also A ltern ative  Program s  for  F in a n c in g  Edu cation  81-101 (1971) 
(National Educational Finance Project vol. 5).



20

Serrano opinion. The most logical reading of the de­
cision is that the court did adopt the formula of equal 
wealth rather than the equal expenditures formula as 
its constitutional command. The probable explanation 
for this is twofold. First, an expenditure equalization 
standard would cause problems with compensatory edu­
cation and other programs that would devote extra 
funds for the education of disadvantaged students. The 
propopents of equal expenditures are also in favor of 
this degree of inequality and struggle valiantly to make 
these concepts consistent. Perhaps their struggles are 
successful. It is much easier, however, to avoid the in­
consistency by not adopting an equal expenditure test- 
in the first place.

The second basic argument in favor of an equal 
wealth standard is that it permits a local school dis­
trict to choose how much it wishes to spend on the ed­
ucation of its children. The desirability of retaining 
this local choice responds to basic federalist, pluralist 
values of diversity and local decisionmaking—-a con­
cept termed “ subsidiarity”  in Private Wealth and 
Public EducationP In Serrano the state argued that 
the existing school financing system was constitutional­
ly valid because it incorporated just these values.85

^ P rivate  W e a l t h  an d  Public  Ed u cation , supra note 22. at 14-15. Sub­
sidiarity is “ the principle that government should ordinarily leave decision­
making and administration to the smallest unit of society competent to handle 
them.” Id. 14. See also Goldstein, Book Review, 59 C a l if . L. R e v . 302, 306 
(1971).

35The court quoted the state’s argument that:
“ [I ] f  one district raises a lesser amount per pupil than another 

district, this is a matter of choice and preference of the individual dis­
trict and reflects the individual desire for lower taxes rather than an 
expanded educational program, or may reflect a greater interest within



— 21—

The court’s response, while rejecting the state’s arg­
ument, shows sensitivity to the idea of local choice:

[S]o long as the assessed valuation within a dis­
trict’s boundaries is a major determinant of how 
much it can spend for its schools, only a district 
with a large tax base will be truly able to decide 
how much it really cares about education. The poor 
district cannot freely choose to tax itself into an 
excellence which its tax rolls cannot provide. Far 
from being necessary to promote local fiscal choice, 
the present financing system actually deprives the 
less wealthy districts of that option.86

The Serrano court did recognize that local choice 
in nonfiscal educational matters might still be retained 
under centralized financing; yet this limited degree of 
choice is not sufficient. As a purely theoretical issue it 
is difficult to determine the value of retaining local 
control over educational spending, particularly when 
weighed against the possibility of continuing expendi­
ture inequalities, which the retention of local choice 
produces. But this issue is not merely a matter of po­
litical theory. Rather, adoption of the equal wealth 
standard in Serrano is an implicit recognition of the 
fact that, in light of our history and traditions, judicial 
or legislative decrees cannot be used to prevent local- 
ilies from trying to get better education for their chil­
dren by raising more funds locally.

that district in such other services that are supported by local property 
taxes as, for example, police and fire protection or hospital services.”

5 Cal. 3d at 611, 487 P.2d at 1260, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 620.



22

A in-e-Serrano law review article37 by Silard and 
White, which dismissed district power equalizing in 
one paragraph as not producing equality of educational 
offerings, ended discussion of its equalization solution, 
centralized financing, by adding: “ The [centralized 
financing] mechanism might also be formulated in such 
a way as to retain a local option to surtax for addi­
tional education.” ™ This “ local option”  is obviously 
a device to allow localities to spend more on education 
than the centrally determined norm, and thus produce 
inequalities in offering. Despite their very strong com­
mitment to egalitarian principles, proponents of judi­
cial action in this field obviously cannot resist the no­
tion that local districts should retain the option to 
spend more on education. It is this fact, deeply em­
bedded in our public consciousness, that primarily ex­
plains why the Serrano court did not and would not 
require spending equality.39

The existence of this public sense raises a further 
question about the limits of Serrano. Is the Silard and 
White system—centralized financing with a local op­
tion surtax—consistent with the California court’s con­
stitutional standard? While the spending equalization 
standard is not required under Serrano, it remains to 
be seen what minimal remedies are consistent with the

®7Silard & White, supra note 31.
S8W. 29 (emphasis added).
_S9Thi_s public feeling was clearly expressed in the response to the Serrano 

decision in a New York Times editorial. After hailing the case on egalitarian 
grounds, the editorial abruptly concluded with the assertion that the ideal so­
lution for school financing lies in centralized state financing “without discour- 
aging additional investments by education minded communities in the better­
ment of their schools.”  N.Y. Times, Sept. 2, 1971, at 32, col. 1.



standard actually adopted by the court, and thereby 
determine the limits of its holding. Any appearance of 
consistency between Serrano and the surtax proposal 
is nothing more than a semantic illusion, unless the 
surtax were based on power equalization or another 
scheme that removed differential tax bases as an ele­
ment in a district’s ability to surtax itself. Otherwise 
the surtax has the same constitutional defect as that 
condemned in Serrano because the quality of a child’s 
education remains dependent on the district’s wealth. 
In fact, the surtax system is the present system in Cal­
ifornia—it is the foundation plan. The justifications 
for the surtax are the reasons given above for preferr­
ing district power equalizing* over expenditure equali­
zation—subsidiarity and the deeply embedded feeling 
that one cannot preclude a locality from taxing itself 
more heavily, if it so chooses, to get better education 
for its children. But, if  one accepts the Serrano equal 
protection reasoning, these concepts and this felt need 
are only sufficient to justify the surtax if the surtax 
is necessitated by a compelling state purpose. It is not 
clear that these factors even provide a sufficiently com­
pelling purpose to justify district power equalizing. 
Even if they do, however, they would not justify a non­
power equalized surtax. Such a surtax is not necessary, 
because its objective of allowing local choice can be 
achieved by power equalizing. Thus, because it has the 
(S'errario-determined constitutional vice of differential 
expenditures related to differential tax bases that 
power equalizing does not have, it must be invalid un­
der Serrano.



24

The proposal of a centralized financing system with 
a local surtax option also suggests that the evils of 
school finance might be remedied merely by increas­
ing the minimum spent per child. Following this line, 
a system that increased the California foundation plan, 
say from $500 to $1000, might be said to accomplish the 
goal of providing to each student, regardless of the 
district in which he resides, an adequate level of edu­
cational expenditure. Such a constitutional standard 
would be based not on equal protection but on a con­
stitutional right to an affirmative minimum provision 
of services similar to that suggested by Professor 
Frank Miehelman and discussed later in a footnote to 
this Article.40 One of the most fundamental objections 
to this concept of minimum provision of services is the 
inability of courts to determine at what point the mini­
mum of a given service has been reached. In the hypo­
thetical above, $1000 was used, but why should the min­
imum not be $1200? Indeed, why is the current mini­
mum of approximately $500 unacceptable ? Apparently 
the California legislature believed it to be sufficient.

One might simply argue that a minimum of $500 is 
unreasonable, a determination that a court could make 
without having to determine exactly what the minimum 
should be. Such an approach, however, ignores the need 
for judicial standards as illustrated by recent Supreme 
Court history. As happened in reapportionment be- 0

i0See note 84 infra; Miehelman, Forward: On Protecting the Poor Through 
the Fourteenth Amendment, The Supreme Court, 1968 Term, 83 H a r v . L . 
R e v . 7 (1 9 6 9 ).



tween the Baker v. Carr*1 “ rationality”  test and the 
Reynolds v. Sims42 “ one man-one vote”  test, once a 
court defines a principle it is difficult to stop short of 
setting- a minimum standard.48

Lastly, one may argue that, under a system with a 
sufficiently large state minimum, the surtax is merely 
a minor deviation that will be permitted under Serrano 
in the same manner that the United States Sup'reme 
Court has allowed a degree of deviation from mathe­
matical precision under its one man-one vote rule. The 
two situations are not comparable, however. The sur­
tax, unlike the unavoidable, inconsequential deviations 
o f voting district mathematics, is a policy decision to 
allow some school districts to make their schools un­
equal to schools in other districts. The more apt reap­
portionment analogy is deviation for policy prefer­
ences, such as protecting rural areas. Such policy pre­
ferences have been rejected by the Supreme Court in 
the reapportionment cases.44 Of course, in school fi­
nancial equalization there will b e deviations f r o in

«-369 U.S. 186 (1962).
42377 U.S. 533 (1964).
43Professor Michelman recognized this when he hypothesized the applica­

tion of his minimum protection theory to education. After suggesting that each 
child was constitutionally entitled to a minimum provision of education, he 
concluded that minimum provision would mean equalization. He based this 
conclusion on the fact that education is valued because of its relevance to 
competitive activities; thus the minimum required for A must be determined 
in relation to what his competitor, or future competitor, B, is receiving. While 
there is merit in this position, Professor Michelman overstates it when he 
thereby equates the minimum with no substantial inequality. The fact that he 
does so, however, is indicative of the standardless nature of the minimum pro­
vision theory. Professor Michelman thus is driven to equalization in order to 
provide a standard. Michelman, supra note 40, at 47-59,

^See Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533. 562-68 (1964). But see Abate v. 
Mundt, 403 U.S. 182 (1971).



26

mathematical certainties as a result of such things as 
differential labor costs and economies of scale. Such 
deviations occur because o f a practical inability t o 
achieve perfect equality. The surtax is not such a de­
viation. It represents a conscious decision to create in­
equality.

II. D i s t r i c t  W e a l t h  D i s c r i m i n a t i o n  : A S u s p e c t  
G l a s s i f i c a t i o n ?

While the California Supreme Court’s reliance on 
an equal wealth formula thereby precludes resort to 
remedies such as the surtax system, and limits the 
holding so that it does not require expenditure equa­
lization, the court’s adoption of equal wealth has sig­
nificance beyond its force as a limitation. Wealth dis­
crimination was, in fact, the affirmative basis used to 
invalidate an almost universal school financing system. 
The Serrano court cited “ wealth discrimination”  as 
one of the “ suspect classifications”  that, in conjunc­
tion with a fundamental interest, triggered the “ new 
equal protection. ’ HS

The Serrano court held 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,” 46 that is, the 
wealth of his school district. The factual data relied 
on by the court in reaching this result, however, con­
sisted of disparities in tax bases and school expendi-

Cal. 3d at 597, 487 P.2d at 1250. 96 Cal. Rptr. at 610.
Mid. at 590, 487 P.2d at 1244, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 604.



—27

tures among school districts. Therefore, two basic ques­
tions must be answered before this holding is 'related 
to the data:

1. What is the relationship between school expen­
ditures and the “ quality”  of a child’s education?

2. What is the relationship between poor districts 
—districts with low taxable wealth—and poor people?

A. The Relationship of Expenditures to Educa­
tional Quality

The problem of relating levels of educational ex­
penditures to quality of education is a persistent and 
annoying one. For one thing, there is no consensus on 
what the desired educational outputs are, or how edu­
cational quality should be measured. Secondly, there 
is very little empirical data to support a finding of an 
affirmative relationship between expenditure levels 
and measurable educational outputs.

The Coleman Report,47 the leading study attempt­
ing to correlate selected educational outputs with vari­
ous inputs, founds little relationship between expendi­
ture levels and the educational outputs it measured, 
when other variables were held constant.48 While the 
Coleman Report’s methodology has been attacked per­
suasively,49 affirmative data that dispute its conclusion

47O ffice  of Ed u c a t io n , U.S. D e p ’ t  of H e a l t h , Edu cation  & W e l ­
fare , Eq u a l it y  of Ed u c ation al  O p p o r t u n it y  (1966).

48See id. 20-21, 312-16.
49See Bowles & Levin, The Determinants of Scholastic Achievement— An 

Appraisal of Some Recent Evidence, 3 J. H u m an  R esource s  3 (1968).



-28

remain minimal.30 The Coleman Report and other 
studies are concerned with spending differentials only 
within the relatively narrow range of current school 
expenditures. The lack of correlation between expendi­
ture levels and educational outputs in this range does 
not preclude the possibility of some absolute minimum 
of expenditures being necessary to achieve measurable 
educational outputs. Further, this absence of correla­
tion between expenditures and outputs is more under­
standable when it is recognized that approximately 
two-thirds of a typical school district’s revenues are 
spent for teacher salaries.51 Differences in teacher sal­
aries are often a function not of teaching quality, but 
of such indirectly related factors as longevity and ed­
ucational degrees. Differences in salary scales among 
districts may be the result of such factors as differ­
ential general wage scales and the bargaining power of 
teacher unions. The Serrano court discussed the prob­
lem of relating expenditures to quality in a footnote 
and admitted that “ there is considerable controversy 
among educators over the relative impact of eduea-

50Some support for a correlation between expenditure level and quality 
of education is found in J. G u t h r ie , G . K lf.in d o r fe r , H. L evin  & R. St o u t , 
Sc h o o l s  an d  I n e q u a lit y  (1971). This support, however, is hardly sufficient 
to support a judicial finding of correlation. Moreover, a recently published re­
examination of the Coleman data by a score of eminent social scientists in a 
faculty seminar at Harvard University has confirmed the findings of the orig­
inal report, while avoiding some of the original report’s methodological prob­
lems. Indeed, this reexamination indicates that the influence of school ex­
penditures on student achievement is even weaker than was indicated by 
the original Coleman Report. See Hosteller & Moynihan, A. Pathbreaking 
Report, in O n  E q u a l it y  of Ed u c a tio n a l  O p p o r t u n it y  36-45 (F. Mosteller 
& D. Moynihan eds. 1972): Jencks, The Coleman Report and the Conven­
tional Wisdom, in id. 69-115; Smith, Equality of Educational Opportunity: 
The Basic Findings Reconsidered, in id. 230-42.

51Schoettle, The Equal Protection Clause in Public Education. 71 C o lu m  
L. R ev . 1355, 1359 (1971).



29

tional spending and environmental influences on school 
achievement . . . .” 52

The court avoided the problem in two ways. One 
was to cite other cases that have rejected the argument 
that there is no proof that different levels of expendi­
ture affect the quality of education.53 Except for the 
latest decision in Hobson v. Hansen,5i discussed below, 
these cases have not given a rationale for this rejection.

Secondly, the court relied on the procedural pos­
ture of the case. Since the complaint was dismissed on 
demurrer, the court countered the defendant’s conten­
tion that different levels of educational expenditures 
do not affect the quality of education with the state­
ment that “ plaintiffs’ complaint specifically alleges 
the contrary, and for purposes of testing the sufficien­
cy of a complaint against a general demurrer, we must 
take its allegations to be true.” 55 It is not clear that 
this approach was consistent with the court’s earlier 
statement that the California procedure is to “ treat the

B25 Cal. 3d at 601 n. 16, 487 P. 2nd at 1253 n. 16, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 613 
n. 16.

ss/d . The court cited Mclnnis v. Shapiro, 293 F. Supp. 327 (N.D. 111. 
1968), aff’d mem. sub nom. Mclnnis v. Ogilvie, 394 U.S. 322 (1969), in 
which a 3-judge federal court stated, without a supporting citation, in the 
course of rejecting a constitutional attack on interdistrict differentials in school 
financing, “ [presumably, students receiving a $1000 education are better 
educated that [sic] those acquiring a $600 schooling.” 293 F. Supp. at 331.

In another case cited in Serrano, Hargrave v. Kirk, 313 F. Supp. 944 (M.D. 
Fla. 1970), vacated on other grounds per curiam sub nom. Askew v. Hargrave, 
401 U.S. 476 (1971), the district court stated: “ [I]t may be that in the 
abstract ‘the difference in dollars available does not necessarily produce a 
difference in the quality of education.’ But this abstract statement must give 
way to proof to the contrary in this case.”  313 F. Supp. at 947. No proof on 
this issue, however, was ever stated by the court in Hargrave and the opinion 
goes on not to discuss this, but to discuss the inability of school districts to 
raise school revenues under the Florida system.

543 2 7 F. Supp. 844 (D.D.C. 1971).
525 Cal. 3d at 601 n. 16, 487 P. 2d at 1253 n. 16, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 613



30—

demurrer as admitting all material facts properly 
pleaded, but not contentions, deductions or conclusions 
of fact or law.” 515 The court did not explain why, for 
example, the possibility of a causal relationship be­
tween expenditures and educational quality would not 
be considered a contention of fact. .More significantly, 
the reliance on this procedural posture, if this is what 
the court did, means that the issue still remains open 
for proof—proof that does not appear to be available.

The authors of Private Wealth and Public Educa­
tion, in enunciating the equal wealth standard, try to 
finesse the problem by stating the issue as equality of 
resources available to the student rather than as equal­
ity of educational offerings. What is available, they 
then contend, are the goods and services purchased 
by school districts, and there is no reason to assume 
that the money spent for these goods and services is 
not the appropriate measure of their value.57

The problems may also be avoided in terms of bur­
den of proof. When A shows that the state is spending- 
more money on B than on him, the state must respond 
by demonstrating either that this fact is irrelevant be­
cause A is not really receiving less than B, or that even 
if A is receiving less, the differential is still constitu­
tionally permissible. Available data are insufficient to 
support a state’s assertion that expenditures are irrele­
vant to educational equality and thus the issue shifts to

Mid. at 591, 487 P.2d at 1245, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 605.

B’ Private  W e a l t h  and  P u blic  Ed u cation , supra note 22, at 25-27.



—31

a determination of the constitutionality of differential 
treatment. This burden of proof approach to the issue 
was apparently the one taken by Judge Wright in the 
latest decision of Hobson v. Hansen/’8 although there 
were also elements of estoppel involved in the Hobson 
court’s reliance on the school administration’s own as­
sertions of a correlation beteen educational 'resources 
and quality of education.38

While the burden of proof argument has appeal as 
an expedient solution it is not a completely satisfying 
basis for judicial invalidation of a longstanding method 
of public school financing. From this perspective, arg­
uments for judicial action must be discounted some- 
Avhat by uncertainty about the present system’s detri­
mental effect on the quality of education, and also 
therefore, by doubts of improving education by such 
invalidation.60

58327 F. Supp. 844, 854-55. The court in Hobson was not concerned with 
a correlation between gross expenditures and quality of education, but rather 
with the specific differences in expenditures on teacher salaries, rated on a 
per pupil basis, between essentially “ white” and “ black”  schools within the. 
District of Columbia. The quality-expenditure issue in terms of teacher sal­
aries per pupil was posed as the correlation or lack thereof between quality- 
instruction and higher salaries. Phrasing the issue as “ teacher salary per pupil” 
also raised the issue of the relationship between educational quality and class 
size or student-teacher ratio.

58Id. at 855.
«oprofessor Moynihan has suggested that:
[t]he only certain result that will come from [a rise in educational ex­
penditures, which he states Serrano will produce] is that a particular 
cadre of middle-class persons in the possession of certain licenses— that 
is to say teachers— will receive more public money in the future than 
they do now.

Moynihan, Can Courts and Money Do It?, N.Y. Times, Jan. 10, 1972, §E 
(Annual Education Review) at 24, col. 1. Note that by ordering equalization 
of teacher salaries per pupil between “ white”  and “black” schools, Judge 
Wright in Hobson v. Hansen, 327 F. Supp. 844 (D.D.C. 1971), allowed the 
school district the choice of transferring higher paid teachers from “white” 
schools to “black” schools or reducing the student-teacher ratio in the “ black” 
schools. Although the evidence of correlation between class size and pupil



-32—

13. The Relationship of Poor Districts to Poor 
People

The second question raised by the wealth analysis 
underlying the Serrano holding centers on the supposed 
relationship between a school district’s wealth, as mea­
sured by its real estate tax base, and the personal 
wealth of its people. For its wealth classification argu­
ment the court relied on United State Supreme Court 
“ de facto wealth classification”  cases in which states 
have been restricted in imprisoning indigents for fail­
ure to pay fines,01 have been required to provide indi­
gent criminal defendants with such things as tran­
scripts02 and attorneys for appeal,63 and have been pre­
cluded from requiring the payment of a poll tax as a 
precondition to voting.64 All of these eases, however, in­
volved “ wealth classifications”  that operated against 
individuals, whereas Serrano involved school districts. 
The issue in Serrano would therefore be simpler if  the 
wealth of school districts coincided with the wealth of 
its people, thus making poor districts aggregates of 
poor individuals.

Available statistics, however, do not indicate this 
hypothesized 'relationship between poor districts and

performance does not seem significantly greater than that between average 
teacher salary and pupil performance, one’s subjective sense is that the class 
size is the more significant factor to education. Both the intradistrict and racial 
aspects of Hobson also strengthened the case for judicial intervention.

"Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235 11970); Tate v. Short, 401 U.S. 395 
\ 1^  /  I  / •

62Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956).
,!8DougIas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963).
84Harper v. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).



33-

poor people. One recent study of 223 school districts 
in eight states indicates that there is no substantial 
pattern of differences in real estate tax basis per pupil 
among seven categories of school districts: major ur­
ban core cities, minor urban core cities, independent 
cities, established suburbs, developing suburbs, small 
cities, and small towns.66 It is true that the three-judge 
federal district court which invalidated the Texas 
school financing system in Rodrigues v. San Antonio 
Independent School District found that “ those dis­
tricts most rich in property also have the highest medi­
an family income and the lowest percentage of minority 
pupils, while the poor property districts are poor in 
income . . . . ” 06 The basis for this finding was an affi­
davit submitted by plaintiffs and cited by the court. 
As a basis for the court’s conclusion, this was a ques­
tionable source; a careful reading of the data contained 
in the affidavit creates grave doubts about the validity 
of its conclusions.67

e5S ee  A lt e r n a tiv e  Program s  for  F in a n c in g  E d u cation  83-89 (1971) 
(National Educational Finance Project vol. 5).

66337 F. Supp. at 282 (W.D. Tex. 1971).
e7The Rodriguez court cited the affidavit as showing a median family in­

come of $5900 in the 10 districts with the highest tax base per pupil and $3325 
in the 4 districts with the lowest tax base per pupil. Id. at 282 n.3. The fol­
lowing are the study’s figures:

Market Value of 
Taxable Property 

Per Pupil 
Above $100,000 

(10 Districts) 
$100,000-$50,000 

(26 Districts) 
$50,000-$30,000 

(30 Districts) 
$30,000-$10,000 

(40 Districts) 
Below $10,000 

(4 Districts)

Median Family 
Income From 

1960 
$5900

Per Cent 
Minority 

Pupils
8%

State & Local 
Revenues Per 

Pupil 
$815

4425 32 544

4900 23 483

5050 31 462

3325 79 305



34

In tlie amicus brief filed in Serrano by the Harvard 
Centers for Educational Policy Research and for Law 
and Education, an attempt was made to avoid the ab­
sence of statistics correlating poor people and poor 
school districts, by defining the injured class as those 
poor people who also live in poor school districts,68 Al­
though the amicus brief never explains the basis for 
this definition of the injured class, it may be argued 
that the people in this narrow group are singularly 
disadvantaged because they have neither the advantage 
of a high tax base as do the poor in rich districts, nor 
the mobility68 and private school alternatives of the 
more wealthy residents of poor school districts. The 
flaw in this approach is that defining the injured class 
in these terms considerably weakens the wealth classi­
fication argument. The system no longer can be said 
to discriminate against the poor but only against a 
certain segment of the poor. In fact, when the school fi­
nance system is viewed from this perspective, the chief 
beneficiaries of the system when the class is so defined

Affidavit of Joel S. Berke at 6 (footnotes omitted).
The 5 category breakdown of school districts seems to be arbitrary, and it 

is only this breakdown which appears to produce the correlation of poor 
school districts and poor people. Even on this breakdown, however, the cor­
relation is doubtful. Note the very small number of districts in the top and 
bottom categories. Even more significant is the apparent inverse relationship 
between property value and median income in the three middle districts, where 
96 of the 110 districts fall. While the family income differences among the 
3 groups of districts are small, they may be even more significant if categories 
are weighted by the number of districts in each. At the very least, the study 
does not support the affirmative correlation of poor school districts and poor 
people stated by the court and the affiant; this is, however, the study the 
court relied upon, and it is apparently the only study which purports to show 
such correlation.

68Brief for the Center for Educational Policy Research and the Center for 
Law and Education as Amici Curiae at 3 n.l.

6»Id. 6 n.5.



— 35—

would be those pool’ families who live in rich districts. 
Not only do they have a resource advantage over those 
who live in poor districts, but also, they get more school 
for fewer tax dollars than do their more wealthy neigh­
bors in the rich districts. The relative advantage of 
the poor in rich districts is further increased by the 
very factors that arguably are the unique disadvantage 
of the poor in poor districts—their lack of mobility 
and private school alternatives. As with the wealthy 
in poor districts, the wealthy in rich districts are not 
as dependent on their district’s public schools as their 
less affluent neighbors and thus not as benefited by 
living in a rich district under the present system.

Finally, to focus on aiding the poor who live in poor 
districts would probably require greater relief than 
that offered by Serrano and the subsequent cases. Un­
der this analysis, the poor in districts that undervalue 
education under such equal wealth alternatives as dis­
trict power equalizing would be just as disadvantaged 
as the poor who live in poor districts today. Their im­
mobility and lack of private school alternatives would 
still uniquely disadvantage them as compared to the 
wealthy inhabitants of the same districts, and the poor 
in districts with greater school expenditures. A  focus 
on the poor in poor districts would, therefore, require 
equalization of expenditures to avoid the hypothesized 
legal wrong.

Another complication in applying a district wealth 
classification theory is that any correlation that does 
exist between poor school districts and poor people



36—

may vary from state to state. Also, it is quite possible 
that there is a greater correlation between the rural 
poor and poor school districts than there is between 
the urban poor and poor school districts. I f  this cor­
relation is necessary to the legal analysis, the legiti­
macy of the Serrano result might very well vary from 
state to state. A decision by the United States Supreme 
Court, however, attempting to differentiate among the 
states, would be entirely inappropriate. It would be 
most unwise to have basically similar state systems 
held invalid or valid depending on where the state’s 
poor lived, or more accurately, depending on judges’ 
views of the difficult statistical analysis demonstrating 
a correlation between poor people and poor school dis­
tricts.

A related failure to demonstrate a relationship be­
tween blacks or other racial minorities and poor dis­
tricts is particularly disappointing to proponents of 
judicial action for whom the presence of such correla­
tion would have significant legal effects.70 One report 
notes that in California, over half the minority pupils 
reside in districts with above average assessed wealth 
per pupil.71

™$ee, e.g., Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, 437 F.2d 1286 (5th Cir. 1971), in 
which statistical evidence of discriminatory distribution of municipal services 
along racial grounds triggered a “ compelling state interest” test.

^ P rivate  W e a l t h  an d  P ublic  E d u c a tio n , supra note 22, at 356-57 n.47.
The complaint in Serrano alleged that “ [a] disproportionate number of 

school children who are black children, children with Spanish surnames, chil- 
dren. belonging to other minority groups reside in school districts in which a 
relatively inferior educational opportunity is provided.”  5 Cal. 3d at 590 n.l. 
487 P.2d at 1245 n.l, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 605 n.l. Other than quoting this al­
legation as part of the complaint, however, the California court did not rely 
on it.

Hie affidavit relied on by the court in Rodriguez, 337 F. Supp. at 282



The absence of a correlation between poor or racial 
minorities and poor districts may be attributable to, 
among other factors, the failure of the property tax 
as a measure of a man’s actual wealth. Most signifi­
cantly, however, the reason for the absence of correla­
tion is the location of industrial and commercial pro­
perty, the presence of w h i c h  increases a district’s 
wealth by increasing its tax base, without a necessary 
increase in school population.

These facts raise a basic question of the effect of 
Serrano and its progeny. While the case has been hailed 
on theoretical egalitarian grounds, many of its pro­
ponents are more concerned with the practical prob­
lem of getting more money for urban education. While 
some major cities with high concentrations of poor 
people are financially poor school districts, others, such 
as New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, have 
relatively high tax bases as compared to their respec­
tive state averages.72 * They also spend more per pupil 
than their respective state averages. Therefore, if  cur­
rent expenditures for education were equalized on a 
statewide basis, major cities in many areas would have

n.3 (see note 67 supra), however, did state that, of the districts sampled in 
Texas, the richest districts had 8%  minority pupils while the poorest dis­
tricts had 79% minority pupils. Again, however, the validity of this conclu­
sion based on the study’s figures is doubtful. The “ correlation” only exists for 
the 10 richest and 4 poorest districts. This pattern disappears in the middle 
groups which include 96 of the 110 districts. Whatever correlation there is 
between the percentage of minority people and the tax base wealth of a 
school district in Texas may reflect the rural nature of Texas minority life 
or some other state peculiarity.

72Another reason, in addition to the presence of industrial  ̂ and commer­
cial property, for the absence of correlation between major cities and poor 
districts may be the relatively large number of students in urban areas at­
tending nonpublic, schools.



—38

less money to spend than they have now.73 The same 
would be true if  wealth were equalized with tax rates 
remaining the same.

It is possible that equal wealth systems may, by 
their nature, result not just in equalization of current 
expenditures but also in over-all increased spending for 
education, it  may be that under a scheme of centralized 
financing it would be politically easier for state legis­
latures to raise taxes, and thereby increase total school 
expenditures, than it would be for local school board 
members. The latter are more visible to the taxpayer 
and may, indeed, have to get voter approval for tax 
increases or bond issues. Under district power equali­
zing Professor Brest suggests that, because it is po­
litically impossible for legislators to vote to take local­
ly collected taxes away from a district, tax rate and 
expenditure levels would have to be equalized at the 
highest figures previously available—that is, what the 
wealthiest district produced from its tax rate.74 The 
consequence of this would be enormous increases for

73An equalization principle that operated beyond the sphere of property 
tax base wealth could work against the cities in another area. Local non­
property taxes, though limited in significance to a few states, see note 23 
supra, may also disproportionately favor urban centers. In a study of Alabama 
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee for 
1968-1969, school districts were classified into central city, suburban indepen­
dent city, and rural districts. It was found that in 5 of the 7 states (Ken­
tucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennesseee) the rural dis­
tricts received the least amount of revenue per pupil from such local non- 
property taxes; in 4 of the 7 states (Kentucky, New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Tennessee) the central city districts received the most revenue per pupil The 
average ranking for the 7 states showed that the central city school districts 
on the average received the most revenue per pupil from local nonproperty 
taxes, followed in order by suburban, independent city, and rural districts 
A ltern ative  _ Program s  for  F in a n c in g  Ed u cation  186-87 (1971) (Na­
tional Educational Finance Project vol. 5).

74Brest, Book Review, 23 St a n . L. R ev . 591, 596 (1971).



39

education. So enormous, in fact, that Professor Brest 
uses it to demonstrate the improbabilty of any state 
ever adopting district power equalizing.

Despite these hopes for a greater investment in 
education, the history of state legislative treatment of 
urban education, the serious economic difficulties cur­
rently facing state government, and the domination of 
state governments by r u r a l  and suburban interests 
make it difficult to realistically predict that Serrano 
will result in greater total expenditures for education. 
And if  total expenditures do not increase, then the 
cities, in their relatively wealthy status stand to gain 
little from the Serrano decision.75

C. “ Wealth Classifications”  as Applied to School 
Districts

In addressing the problem of correlating poor peo­
ple and poor school districts in its legal analysis, the 
California Supreme Court first relied on the proced­
ural posture of the case and noted again that the com­
plaint alleged a correlation between poor people and 
poor districts.76 The court did not quote the complaint 
nor state the basis, if any, given for the allegation. The

75It may aid rural education which would help the rural poor. It may also 
be argued that, when relieved of the obligation of financing education, by 
the adoption of a centralized financing scheme for education, urban areas will 
be more able to raise greater revenues for their other needs. This assumes 
either that the state financing scheme will not take the same revenue that the 
urban areas now take for education, or that taxpayers will be more responsive 
to local taxation for other needs if their education taxation goes to the state. 
Such assumptions appear unrealistic; present indications are that statewide 
financing for education will continue to be based on the same real property 
tax as that on which local taxation presently is based.

7«5 Cal. 3d at 600-01, 487 P.2d at 1252, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 612.



— 40

court did not rest on this procedural argument, how­
ever, but went on to state:

More basically, however, we reject defendants’ 
underlying thesis that classification by wealth is 
constitutional so long as the wealth is that of the 
district, not the individual. We think that discrim­
ination on the basis of district wealth is equally 
invalid. The commercial and industrial property 
which augments a district’s tax base is distributed 
unevenly throughout the state. To allot more edu­
cational 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 establish­
ments. Surely, this is to rely on the most irrelevant 
of factors as the basis for educational financing.77

There are, however, serious problems with this ap­
plication of the wealth discrimination cases to govern­
ment entities, as distinguished from individuals. Since 
district wealth is measured by the real estate tax base, 
and the development of a district ’s real estate is a var­
iable factor, the possibility of voluntary “ poverty”  is 
more acute for government entities. Throughout the 
opinion, the court assumed that a district’s wealth was 
a “ fortuitous”  given, beyond a district’s control, and 
not subject to voluntary choice.

While this may generally be correct, it is increas­
ingly true in our environmentally conscious age that

Jtld. at 601, 487 P.2d at 1252-53, 96 Gal. Rptr. at 612-13 (footnote 
omitted).



— 41—

a rural or suburban district might voluntarily exclude 
industrial or commercial development that would in­
crease its wealth by increasing its tax base, without a 
corresponding increase in its school population.78 Un­
der centralized school financing this district would not 
be deprived of school revenues, because 'revenue would 
be independent of local decisions affecting the tax 
base. Under an equal wealth alternative, such as dis­
trict power equalizing, a decision to exclude new de­
velopment would likewise not affect revenues, which 
would be based on a district’s choice of tax rate, not 
wealth. Yet this choice would be logically indistinguish­
able from the choice of tax rates, with its correspond­
ing benefit or detriment to the district’s school reve­
nues, permitted, a n d indeed encouraged b y district 
power equalizing.79

Perhaps it is desirable that districts be able to 
choose to remain at a low level of wealth without ad­
versely affecting school revenue. This would have the 
beneficial effect of freeing a locality from the obliga­
tions of economic development, thus benefiting the area 
ecologically. On the other hand, it may be unfair to 
treat bucolic areas that choose not to expand rapidly

78School districts, as special function governmental units, rarely are 
delegated powers broader than those necessary to administer the school and 
raise funds by taxation and bond issues. General function units, such as mu­
nicipalities and townships, are usually the smallest entitles delegated the power 
over development suggested in the text. Yet, to the extent that general func­
tion units coincide with school districts, or to the extent that the smaller units 
have significant political power within the general unit, one may accurately 
speak of school district political choices.

79Some practical differences, of course, are that a tax rate choice can 
be redetermind on a periodic basis, is unambiguous, and is dearly visible; 
whereas wealth choices have more enduring consequences, may be ambiguous 
as to their basis, and of low visibility.



______42

the same as highly developed areas that have attendant 
congestion, pollution, and other problems that create a 
heavier tax burden for the urban dweller. Additionally, 
widespread decisions not to allow local development 
could seriously undermine a program of decentraliza­
tion of industry and commerce. These economic and 
social effects of Serrano obviously need more explora­
tion than the courts and commentators thus far have 
offered.

The wealth classification precedents employed by 
the Serrano court present another problem. The prin­
ciple contained in this group of United States Supreme 
Court precedents is ambiguous. In the criminal pro­
cedure cases the Supreme Court required the free pro­
vision of transcripts80 and attorneys81 on the basis of 
the indigency of the accused82 On the other hand, the 
Court struck down the use of the poll tax as a precon­
dition to voting in all cases, without regard to finan­
cial ability to pay the tax.83 The United States Supreme

80Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956).
81Douglas v. California, 372 U.S. 353 (1963).
82See also Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235 (1970): Tate v. Short, 401 

U.S. 395 (1971), relieving only indigents of the penalty of imprisonment be­
cause of their inability to pay fines; Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371 
(1971), relieving only indigents of the obligation to pay court fees and costs 
incidental to a divorce proceeding.

88Harper v. State Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966); see Lindsey v 
Normet, 40 U.S.L.W. 4184 (U.S. Feb. 23, 1972), in which the Court held 
unconstitutional an Oregon statute that required a tenant appealing an evic­
tion judgment to post a bond for twice the rental value of the premises from 
the commencement of the action in which the judgment was rendered until 
the final judgment on appeal. In so holding, the Court invalidated the high 
bond requirement for all tenant-defendants, regardless of their ability to pay 
the bond.

See also Bullock v. Carter, 40 U.S.L.W. 4211 (U.S. Feb. 24, 1972). con­
cerning the validity of high filing fees for entry into Texas nominating pri­
maries. The decision is ambiguous as to whether the Court held the system 
unconstitutional as applied to all candidates, including those who could raise



—43

Court lias subsequently cited these cases indistinguisb- 
ably as “ de facto wealth classifications,”  without ap­
parent recognition of the difference between saying 
that no one can be made to pay for a given service, and 
saying that one who cannot afford to pay for a given 
service cannot for that reason alone be deprived of it.84

The former formula of requiring no payment from 
anyone has the advantage of encouraging all-—rich, 
poor, and in-between—to avail themselves of the ser­
vice. This is the aim, for example, of free public edu­
cation and, perhaps, the reason for voiding the poll
the high fees, or only held that those who. because of their indigency, couid 
not raise the high fees had to be relieved from doing so. The Court did stress 
the issue of the “ inability”  (without defining the term) of some candidates to 
pay the fee and thus indicated that it could be constitutionally permissible 
for Texas to maintain its general fee system and except only those with this 
“ inability.”

84Professor Frank Michelman, in his article, supra note 40, cited by the 
Serrano court, has argued persuasively that these cases are better understood 
as substantive due process “minimum protection” cases rather than as equal 
protection cases. The distinction between “minimum protection” and “equal 
protection”  is set forth by Michelman as “ vindication of a state’s duty to pro­
tect against certain hazards which are endemic to an unequal society, rather 
than vindication of a duty to avoid complicity in unequal treatment,”  Id. 9 
(emphasis omitted). Minimum protection thus means state fulfillment of those 
just wants (or fundamental rights) that our society cannot constitutionally 
accept as being subject to normal market risks of nonsatisfaction. This changes 
the focus of inquiry from “ wealth classification”  to the determination of what 
are just wants and what is meant by their nonsatisfaction.

Justice Harlan adopted the Michelman approach in his concurring opinion 
in Williams v. Illinois, 399 U.S. 235, 259 (1970), and employed it for the 
Court in Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371 (1971) over the objection of 
Justice Douglas. Justice Harlan’s attempt to shift the Court to the Michel­
man due process approach has apparently been unsuccessful. See Bullock v. 
Carter, 40 U.S.L.W. 4211 (U.S. Feb. 24, 1972).-

In discussing the minimum protection thesis, Professor Michelman notes 
the difference in treatment discussed in the text between the poll tax and 
criminal procedure cases. H does not, however, appear to offer a rationale 
for this difference. Michelman, supra note 40, at 24-26. Fie suggests that under 
his minimum protection theory, the state’s obligation is normally satisfied 
“ by free provision to those and only to those who cannot satisfy their just 
wants out of their own means.”  Id. 26. Nor would his theory require a grad­
uated schedule of payments above the indigency threshold. Justice Harlan in 
his concurring opinion in Williams v. Illinois pointed out that logical conse­
quence of the Court’s equal protection theory would require a graduated sched­
ule of payments for those above the indigency level. 399 U.S. at 261.



44

tax as a prerequisite for voting. On the other hand, 
an exemption from payment only for the poor results 
in a greater redistribution of wealth than does a no­
payment principle.

To view the problem only in terms of those who can 
pay all or those who can pay nothing is also to over­
simplify. One basic prerequisite is a determination of 
what level of sacrifice is required before one can say 
that a given individual or group is “ unable”  to pay 
for a service. Again, the leading cases have not dealt 
with this pervasive problem. Perhaps the level of sac­
rifice required of an individual can also be related (in­
versely) to the degree that society desires that everyone 
avail himself of the service; that is, the more society 
wants the service used, the less sacrifice is required 
for it.8B Even this formula may need reevaluation to the 
extent that sacrifice is also considered to be a signifi­
cant measure of the value of a service to an individual 
and recognition of that value by the individual in­
creases the societal result desired.

The ambiguous result presented by the individual 
wealth discrimination cases is compounded when ap­
plied, as in Serrano, to an aggregation of individuals 
—a school district. In this setting, level of sacrifice 
may become useless as a guideline for determining 
when to apply the no-payment principle. Governmental

85 Under Professor Michelman’s theory, Michelman, supra note 40, ab­
sent the “ remote”  possibility that one might deliberately waive his claim to 
the satisfaction of a just want, a person is always entitled to satisfaction of 
his just wants regardless of the sacrifice he is or is not willing to make to 
attain such satisfaction. Id. 14. He does not, however, satisfactorily explain 
why this is so.



45

units may have a greater array of demands on re­
sources than do individuals; districts may he able to 
reallocate priorities in a way that individuals cannot. 
Arguably, street cleaning or hospital construction can 
always be cut back to pay for education. More signifi­
cantly, a poor district’s ability to raise its taxes or 
create revenue through borrowing may be so much 
greater than the ability of a poor person to raise rev­
enue that the issue of level of sacrifice becomes mean­
ingless.

The California Supreme Sourt recognized the dif­
ficulty of deriving from the wealth classification pre­
cedents a rule that, as applied to districts, would de­
fine the limits of sacrifice—determine which districts 
could not, and therefore need not, pay. One response 
by the court was to assert that “ as a statistical matter, 
the poorer districts are financially unable to raise their 
taxes high enough to match the educational offerings of 
wealthier districts. ’ ,86 The authority given for t h i s  
statement was an unquoted reference to a Legislative 
Analyst study. The court, rightly, was unwilling to rest 
on that.87 Rather, it relied primarily on the proposition

865 Cal. 3d 599-600, 487 P.2d at 1251, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 611.
87Under the California financing system there is no limit on the rate at 

which, with voter approval, a district can choose to tax itself. Thus, there is 
no legal limit on a district’s ability to raise its revenue. This may be con­
trasted with the situation in Florida which was presented to a 3-judge court 
in Hargrave v. Kirk, 313 F. Supp. 944 (M.D. Fla.. 1970), vacated on other 
grounds per curiam sub nom. Askew v. Hargrave, 401 U.S. 476 (1971). 
Florida, in its “ Millage Rollback Act,” provided that, in order to qualify for 
state subvention, a school district could not tax itself at a rate greater than 
10 mills. The district court accepted the argument that this limit was in­
valid because it put a limit on tax rates (or penalized districts for high rates), 
thus precluding school districts with lower tax bases from producing the same 
revenue as those with higher bases. The district court invalidated this limit 
on the grounds that there was no rational basis for it. In this the court was



— 46—

that even if poorer districts could achieve expenditure 
parity by higher tax rates, “ the richer district is fa­
vored when it can provide the same educational quality 
for its children with less tax effort.” 88

This statement suggests, that as applied to districts, 
the evil to be cured is not merely absolute deprivation, 
but relative disadvantage in ability to pay. This theory 
goes well beyond the de facto wealth eases that relieved 
only indigents of the obligation to pay for certain ser­
vices.89 Obviously, within the nonindigent category, the 
wealthier can purchase the service with less effort than 
the less wealthy. But the precedents do not require 
free provision of services to all or graded fees based 
on the ability to pay of those above the indigent cutoff 
line.

patently in error. The state does have a rational purpose in preserving its own 
sources of revenue and protecting the taxpayers from overtaxation by their local 
school districts.

The court did accurately recognize, however, that the limit meant that dis­
tricts with lower tax bases could not, even by taxing themselves more, equalize 
school expenditures with wealthier tax base districts. Yet, there is a para­
doxical effect here. Florida argued in the United States Supreme Court that 
the limit was intended to be, and was, equalizing in a way that benefited 
poorer school districts. It had this effect, because for each percentage increase 
m tax rate, the wealthier district could produce more dollars per pupil than 
the poor one. To illustrate this, consider the hypothetical case of 2 school dis­
tricts, A with $100,000 assessed valuation per pupil and B with $50,000 as­
sessed valuation per pupil. If a 1.0% limit were put on both A and B A 
could produce $1000 per pupil and B, $500, a difference of $500. By con­
trast, if there were no limit, and both A and B taxed at 1.5%, A would have 
$1500 and B, $750, a difference of $750, and so on. Thus, while holding 
A down, the limit also holds down the possible dollar divergence between A 
and B.

The Supreme Court vacated and remanded the case, on the question of 
whether the district court should have refused to exercise jurisdiction under 
the abstention doctrine.

885 Cal. 3d at 599, 487 P.2d at 1251, 96 Cal. Rptr at 611.
8()It would also go beyond the court’s apparent limitation of Proposition 

1 to cases in which there are expenditure differentials, and underlines the tax­
payer orientation of Proposition 1. See note 28 supra,



47

When applied to school districts, a constitutional 
standard of graded ability to pay becomes an even 
greater innovation than if it were applied to individ­
uals. When dealing with school districts we are deal­
ing with taxation. Let us assume, for example, equal 
spending per pupil among school districts. Each school 
district raises its required revenue by dividing its ex­
penditure total by the number of its inhabitants (or 
the number of its families). It then assesses each in­
habitant (or family) a per capita share of the total 
revenues required and levies a tax accordingly. I f  the 
state is redistricted so that aggregate individual wealth 
of each district is the same, the system clearly would 
not violate the Serrano holding because no school dis­
trict, qua district, would have to make a greater effort 
than any other to raise the required revenues, never­
theless, is this the relevant issue ?

Burdens of taxation fall not on school districts, but 
on taxpayers. Even though districts are equalized in 
wealth consistent with Serrano, individuals or families 
are not. It would make no difference to the poor tax­
payer who had difficulty meeting his tax burden, that 
there were an equal number of poor people with the 
same difficulty in other school districts. I f  the school 
districts in the example did v a r y in the aggregate 
wealth of their residents this system might violate 
Serrano; one could say that it was easier for the school 
district with greater aggregate wealth to raise its rev­
enue than for the poorer one to do so. This approach 
still misses the point. The real problem is the individ­



__48.

ual taxpayer’s difficulty in paying his tax bill. I f  Ser­
rano labels relative deprivation among districts uncon­
stitutional, then does its logic not require elimination of 
disproportionate sacrifice among those who pay the 
tax ? Does the former proposition even make any sense 
without the latter?

I f  there is a constitutional vice created by the dif­
ferential ability of taxpayers to meet their obligations, 
does this then mean that proportional, or even pro­
gressive, taxation is constitutionally compelled? It is 
doubtful that the Serrano court meant to suggest this 
outcome.90 Nevertheless, without such a conclusion it is 
difficult to understand why it is unconstitutional to 
have a system whereby one district can more easily 
raise revenue than another. It is indeed probable un­
der present financing systems, including that of Cali­
fornia, that the average resident of a rich district pays 
higher taxes, in terms of gross dollars, for his schools 
than does the average resident of a poor district, des­
pite the fact that the resident of the rich district is 
taxed at a lower rate.91 This may be the result of the

90The complaint contained counts by both students and parent taxpayers. 
The court’s entire analysis was directed to the student plaintiff count, how­
ever. In addressing itself, at the end of the opinion to the dismissal of the 
taxpayer count, the court did not discuss the independent claims of the tax­
payers, qua taxpayers, that, being in a poor district, they were required to 
pay taxes at a higher rate to secure the same or less educational expenditures. 
It reversed the dismissal of the taxpayer count solely on the basis that the 
taxpayer plaintiffs had incorporated the unequal education allegations of the 
student plaintiffs into their count, and that, under California law, they had 
standing to assert the students’ educational interests. 5 Cal. 3d at 618 487 
(P.2d at 1265, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 625.

81In addition, taxpayers might very well be paying for the education of 
their children in the prices they pay for their homes, as well as in their tax 
payments. _ To the extent that the quality of education in a given district is 
disproportionately high in relation to real estate taxes paid by the home owners 
of the district, this fact should be reflected in the price of the district’s homes.



-4 9

higher assessed valuation and, perhaps, larger average 
property holdings of the individual taxpayers in the 
rich district. A correlation may even exist between the 
amount of tax dollars paid by the average resident of 
a district and the educational expenditures of that dis­
trict. I f  this is so, the difficulty is not with dispropor­
tionate payments but with inequitable taxation, not 
only in the hypotheticals above, but also in the existing 
financing schemes. The logic of Serrano, which invali­
dated these existing financing schemes, may therefore 
'require the wealthy taxpayer to bear a greater burden 
than just having to pay more tax dollars than the poor. 
Instead it may demand at least a proportional tax sys­
tem, and possibly one that is progressive.

The difficulties of relating the wealth of individ­
uals to the wealth of districts, of applying wealth class­
ification precedents to districts, and of finding a logi­
cal stopping place for the equality concepts involved, 
are not the only problems with the wealth classification 
analysis of Serrano v. Priest. In fact, the entire foun­
dation of the court’s constitutional argument may well 
have been destroyed by a United States Supreme Court 
decision which the Serrano court disturbingly ignored. 
In James v. ValtierraP the Supreme Court implied that 
even the existence of “ invidious classifications on the 
basis of wealth”  are insufficient to trigger the com­
pelling interest standard of the new equal protection.

In Valtierra, the Supreme Court upheld a Califor­
nia constitutional provision that no low-rent housing

&2402 U.S. 137 (1971.)



— 50-

project could be constructed by a state public body 
unless the project bad been approved by a majority of 
those voting at a local election. Refusing to apply strict 
scrutiny, the Court upheld the mandatory referendum 
on the ground that it was rationally related to the legiti­
mate purpose of achieving popular participation in ex­
penditure decisions. Justice Marshall, in a vigorous 
dissent, noted that the mandatory referendum provi­
sion discriminated solely against the poor. “ Publically 
assisted housing developments designed to accommo­
date the aged, veterans,. . .  or any class of citizens other 
than the poor, need not be approved by prior referen­
d a / ’93 Nevertheless, the Court ignored Douglas, Har­
per, and other cases that had deemed wealth classifica­
tions or discriminations against the poor as inherently 
suspect.94 The Valtierra decision casts an unavoidable 
shadow over the first half of the constitutional analy­
sis employed in Serrano v. Priest.

I I I .  E d u c a t i o n : A  F u n d a m e n t a l  I n t e r e s t ?

A. Relationship Between Fundamentally and 
Impairment of an Interest

The inherently suspect wealth classification argu­
ment is only one-half of the California Supreme Court’s 
constitutional attack on school financing. The court 
also relied on its conclusion that education is one of 
those fundamental interests that, when conditioned 
on wealth classifications, will trigger special scrutiny

d. at 144 (footnote omitted). 
siSee notes 61-64 supra.



Si-

requiring a compelling state interest. The court con­
cluded that education is a fundamental interest based 
on its importance, and its similarity to interests pre­
viously held to be fundamental. The court’s analysis 
proceeded on the unstated assumption that having al­
ready found a suspect trait—wealth classification—if 
it is determined that education is fundamental, then 
the system of education financing here involved must 
meet a compelling interest test to survive consti­
tutional scrutiny. This analysis was developed, how­
ever, without any attempt by the court to correlate the 
various reasons for determining education to be funda­
mental with the constitutional vice here perceived, un­
equal educational expenditures based on differential 
tax bases among school districts.

The Serrano court seems not to have perceived this 
as an issue at all. It was not an issue in the criminal 
process and voting cases decided by the United States 
Supreme Court and discussed above,93 because those 
were cases of total deprivation of the service involved. 
When the effect of state action is total deprivation of 
the service to the individual, whatever fundamental 
aspects of the service exist are necessarily eliminated.90 
On the other hand, where a service is only impaired

95See notes 80-84 supra & accompanying text.
06It may be possible for a service to be held fundamental based solely on 

general societal benefit or externalities unrelated to any particular individual 
enjoying it. Because society’s interest would be in the level of the service en­
joyed by people in the aggregate, arguably this interest would not be impaired 
by inequality among society’s components. If this were so, a total deprivation 
limited to a number of individuals might not impair the bases of fundamen- 
tality. This would seem, however, to be a very rare situation of fundamentality. 
and has not yet arisen in any litigation.



— 52—

rather than total withheld, it would seem necessary to 
determine whether or not the impairment does affect 
the basis of the fundamentality of the service.

As an illustration, assume that a state decided to 
provide all students with free education only through 
eighth grade, and thereafter to charge fees so that 
only those who could afford to pay could attend. In 
analyzing this hypothetical in terms of the fundamen- 
tality of education, one might conclude that all the at­
tributes of education that make it fundamental are 
satisfied by attendance only until eighth grade. I f  that 
were so, the fundamentality of education would be ir­
relevant to the constitutionality of any state decision 
on post-eighth grade education. In the context of Ser­
rano, such an analysis would require detei'mination of 
the relationship between the various grounds for the 
court’s conclixsion that education is fundamental, and 
the inequalities of interdistrict expenditures based on 
differences in taxable wealth among districts.

B. Is Education a Fundamental Interest f

In its analysis of education’s fundamentality, the 
California Supreme Court first recognized that there 
was no direct authority for the proposition that edu­
cation is such a fundamental interest.97 The court then 
went on to make three basic arguments for the funda­
mentality of education, based on :

1. the importance of education to the individual 
and society;

97 5 Cal. 3d at 604, 487 F.2d at 1255, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 615.



53—

2- a comparison of education with the rights of 
criminal defendants and voting rights that have been 
held to be fundamental; and

3. the distinguishing of education from other gov­
ernmental functions that might arguably he as funda­
mental as education.

1. The “ Importance of Education”  Argument

The court first argued for the fundamentality of 
education because it is “ a major determinant of an in­
dividual’s chances for economic and social success in 
our competitive society; . . . [and] a unique influence 
on a child’s development as a citizen and his participa­
tion in political and community life.” 98 In support of 
these statements the court did not cite any social science 
data but rather relied on language in prior cases, prin­
cipally the well-known statements in Brown v. Board 
of Education99 concerning the importance of education 
in today’s world.

As stated above, however, the court did not relate 
these attributes of education to the effect of interdis­
trict disparities in expenditures. Its only reference to 
the issue was an assertion that, while California pre­
cedents “ involved [only] actual exclusion from the 
public schools, surely the right to an education today 
means more than access to a classroom.” 100 For com-

9* « .  at 605, 487 P.2d at 1255-56, 96 Gal. Rptr. at 615-16.
»»347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954).
i»»5 Cal. 3d at 607, 487 P. 2d at 1257, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 617 (footnote 

om itted).



Otl----

parison the court q u o t e d  language in  Reynolds v. 
Sims™1 where the Supreme Court asserted that the 
right to vote is impaired not only by bars to voting 
but by dilution of power by malapportionment. Sims, 
however, is not relevant to the issue posed. The real 
issue in the voting case concerned individual political 
power, an interest clearly and directly impaired by the 
evil to be remedied—malapportionment. There is no a 
priori clear connection between those characteristics of 
education quoted above by the court to establish its 
fundamentality, and financing differentials; nor do ex­
isting data show such a connection.

In terms of an individual’s social and economic suc­
cess, there are data, although hardly incontrovertible, 
correlating length of school attendance and economic 
attainment.102 However, such data do not correlate eco­
nomic or social attainment with differential expendi­
tures and, as indicated above, the whole issue of cor­
relating economic inputs and educational outputs is, 
at best, unclear. As to responsible citizenship there 
again are no empirical data to show a correlation with 
differential expenditures. One’s a priori judgment here 
might be that there is no such correlation.

1M377 U.S. 533, 562-63 (1964).
102See Ed u c a tio n a l  I n v e s t m e n t  in  a n  U rban  So ciety  (M . Levin & A. 

Shank eds. 1970), which contains summaries and analyses of a number of 
studies.



— 55

2. Education Compared to Previously Recognized 
Fundamental Rights

The second part of the court’s argument that edu­
cation is fundamental was a comparison of education 
with those rights the United States Supreme Court 
already has held to be fundamental: various rights of 
criminal defendants and voting. The court recognized 
the uniqueness of an individual’s interest in liberty 
which operates in the criminal procedure area, but 
suggested that education might well be as important 
because it has “ far greater social significance than 
[such procedural protections as] a free transcript or a 
court-appointed lawyer.” 103 Except for an aside that 
education may reduce the crime rate, however, the Ser­
rano court did not really try to equate education with 
the rights of criminal defendants. Nor .should it. The 
protection of the procedural rights of criminal defen­
dants is not solely recognition of a unique right to 
liberty but a recognition of the need for protection 
against the ultimate state attempt to curtail that lib­
erty. The individual, in classic terms, is defending him­
self against the state. This protection of citizen from 
government is the essence o f  t h e  constitutional re­
straints contained in the Bill of Rights and the four­
teenth amendment. Unlike the state’s function of giv­
ing children an education, in the criminal process cases 
the state fulfills its function by taking something—the 
liberty of the criminal. Thus these eases do not support

1035 Cal. 3d at 607, 487 P.2d at 1258, 96 Cal. Rptr, at 618.



— 56-

the proposition that there are fundamental affirmative 
rights to the provision of government services.

The right to vote is an affirmative right ensured 
by the state; it is, however, the ultimate political right 
in a democratic society in a way that makes it sui 
generis. Voting ensures the right to all other rights— 
including education—to the extent achievable through 
the political process. Public education, though certain­
ly relevant to political access, is not intrinsic to democ­
racy. Finally, the most obviously distinctive fact about 
both criminal procedural safeguards and voting is that 
they find expression in the structure of the Federal 
Constitution in a way that education does not.104

3. Education Compared to Other Government 
Functions

In addition to extolling education and comparing it 
with acknowledged fundamental rights, the court in 
Serrano felt compelled to distinguish education from 
other services and interests. This ability to find educa­
tion unique is central to its fundamentality. I f  every­
thing is fundamental, nothing is. Moreover, the unique­
ness of education is an essential limitation on the hold­
ing in the case. The court was most anxious to refute 
the argument that if  differences in spending on ed­
ucation attributable to wealth differentials among geo­
graphical areas are unconstitutional, then so are sim­
ilar differentials in other governmental services.

10iSee Brest, supra note 74, at 606.



— 5 7 -

In attempting to distinguish education from other 
governmental services the court relied on five fac­
tors :105

1. Education is necessary to preserve an individ­
ual’s opportunity, despite a disadvantaged background, 
to compete successfully in the economic market place, 
thus maintaining the existence of “ free enterprise de­
mocracy. ’ ’

2. Education is “ universally relevant.”  Every per­
son benefits from education though not everyone finds 
it necessary to use other governmental services like the 
police or fire department.

3. Public education occupies much of an individ­
ual’s youth— between ten and thirteen years. Pew gov­
ernment services have such “ sustained, intensive con­
tact”  with the individual.

4. No other government service molds the person­
ality of society’s youth as does education.

5. Education is compulsory.

Again, there is the difficulty of relating these dis­
tinguishing features of education to spending differ­
entials. The unproven relationship of educational 
spending to social and economic success has already 
been discussed.106 The universality and prolonged na­
ture of education were used expressly to distinguish it 
from police and fire services. The universality of public

1055 Cal. 3d at 609-10, 487 P.2d at 1258-59, 96 Gal. Rptr. at 618-19. 
iW'See text accompanying notes 98-102 supra.



-58—

education is overstated, however. Although there are 
economic limitations on its use, the alternative of pri­
vate education is available. More significantly, police 
and fire protection are also universal and sustained. 
Their protective attributes do not consist solely of re­
sponding to cries of distress, but consist also of the 
security present on a daily, continuous basis in an in­
dividual’s surroundings. Thus, they cannot be said to 
be less universal or of a shorter duration than educa­
tion.

Reasons four and five do distinguish education, at 
least in degree, from police and fire. This fact does not 
satify the question of what relationship these factors 
have to differential expenditures. The major thrust of 
the argument that education molds personalities and 
that it does so with the force of governmental compul­
sion behind it, would appear to be directed not against 
financing differentials, but against the danger to a 
free society in having the government effectively con­
trol and monopolize this crucial mind forming process. 
As such it would argue much more for the easier avail­
ability of diverse educational experiences, for example, 
through a tuition voucher system, than for equality of 
expenditures.107

The compulsory nature of education merits further 
discussion.108 It was argued that education is funda-

107It may be argued that the personality molding function of education is 
peripherally related to first amendment rights. The difficulties of relating this 
factor to a need for equal expenditures would still apply to the argument 
however. &

108In assessing the applicability of Serrano on a nationwide basis, it should 
be noted that education is not universally compulsory in this country. Mississippi



—59

mental to the individual because by making it compul­
sory the state has designated its importance. On analy­
sis, however, this does not seem convincing. The rea­
sons for making education compulsory are two: (1) 
people might not otherwise avail themselves of this 
service; and (2) the value of freedom of choice is less 
applicable here because the choice of school attendance 
would not be the child’s, but his parents’. This latter, 
parens patriae reason presumes that the state is no 
worse a decisionmaker for a child than are his parents, 
and that a state choice of compulsory schooling pro­
vides a foundation for later choice by the child.

The first reason, that education is compulsory be­
cause otherwise people would not avail themselves of 
the service, does not primarily demonstrate a judgment 
of importance to the individual. Indeed, the need to 
make education compulsory to be certain that all will 
avail themselves of it might indicate its relative unim­
portance to the individual; an opposite determination 
that there is no need to make a service compulsory 
could reflect the belief that all individuals, recogniz­
ing the importance of the service, would use it.

The “ importance”  reflected in the societal decision 
to make education compulsory does not represent the 
value choice of the individual, but rather, of society. 
It may be that the court was here finding the individ-
and South Carolina do not have compulsory school attendance laws and Vir­
ginia has a local option system. Moreover, compulsory school attendance is 
generally limited to those between the ages of 7 to 16. whereas one is entitled 
to attend school generally from ages 6 to 21. See Goldstein, The Scope and 
Sources of School Board Authority to Regulate Student Conduct and Status: 
A Nonconstitutional Analysis, 117 U. Pa. L. R ev. 373, 393-94 n.74- (1969).



— 60—

ual’s interest in education to be fundamental because 
the external benefits of education are valuable to so­
ciety. The flaw in that approach is that society has al­
ready decided what benefits it wants from education 
by legislative determination; it does not need judicial 
intervention.

dSTo'r does the second reason for making education 
compulsory—the parens patriae reasoning—necessari­
ly indicate a judgment of education’s unique impor­
tance to the individual. Rather, it relates to the pecu­
liar situation of the child, an individual for whom 
someone else, parent or state, must make a choice.109

While the reasons for making education compulsory 
do not therefore argue that education is fundamental, 
there remains the significance of compulsory atten­
dance itself.

Initially, it should be remembered that enrollment 
in public school is not required. The option of private 
schooling is constitutionally protected.110 On the other 
hand, private school is a viable option only for those 
who can easily afford it, or who feel strong social, po­
litical, or religious needs that persuade them to make 
the sacrifice necessary to pay for private schooling. 
’The Serrano court stated that the freedom to attend 
private schools “ is seldom available to the indigent. In 
this context, it has been suggested that ‘ a child of the

l09The validity of these rationales for compulsory school laws has been 
challenged in the recent decision of State v. Yoder. 49 Wis. 2d 430, 182 
N.W.2d 539, cert, granted, 402 U.S. 994 (1971).

110See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925).



— 61-

poor assigned willynilly to an inferior state school takes 
on the complexion of a prisoner, complete with a mini­
mum sentence of 12 years.’ ” m While this statement 
embodies some underlying truths, it falls short of per­
suasiveness when applied to interdistrict differentials 
in expenditures.

As discussed above, the correlation between ex­
penditure levels and quality of education is unclear,112 
and there is no demonstrated correlation between “ a 
child of the poor”  and school districts with low real 
property tax bases.113 Moreover, the argument that com­
pelled attendance requires equal expenditures seems 
to be premised on a type of “ right to treatment” —the 
notion that restriction of freedom for a specified pur­
pose obligates the state to satisfy that purpose.114 Yet 
this right would only require a minimum level of treat­
ment to justify curtailing a child’s liberty, or more 
realistically, his parents’ liberty. S u c h  a minimum 
right to treatment may not be in question at all under 
the California foundation plan guarantee and, if it is, 
it is subject to the problems discussed above of court 
determination of the minimum level of a foundation 
guarantee system. A child compelled to go to a poor 
school (rather than not compelled to go to school at 
all) is not hurt by that compulsion vis-a-vis another

l « 5  Cal. 3d at 610, 487 P.2d at 1259, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 619 (quoting from 
Coons, Clune & Sugarman, Educational Opportunity: A Workable Constitu­
tional Test for State Financial Structures, 57 C a l if . L. R f.v . 305, 388 (1969)). 

112See text accompanying notes 47-52 supra. 
xx&See notes 65-67 supra & accompanying text,
u *See, e.g., Wyatt v. Stickney, 325 F. Supp. 781 (M.D. Ala. 1971); 

Symposium— The Right to Treatment, 57 G eo . L.J. 673 (1969).



62

child compelled to go to a better school. He is only 
hurt by that compulsion if  that poor school is worse 
than no school.

In discussing the uniqueness of education, the Ser­
rano court, while trying to distinguish education from 
police and fire protection, did not even consider a com­
parison between education and provision of the essent­
ials of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter. Such a 
comparison would seem imperative, for in Dandridge 
v. Williams115 the United States Supreme Court up­
held welfare grant restrictions on a traditional rational 
basis test, not the compelling interest test employed 
by the Supreme Court in protecting fundamental in­
terests. This was done despite prior dictum that sub­
sistence was a fundamental interest.118

The Dandridge opinion does not expressly deny 
that subsistence is a fundamental interest. Rather, it 
states that welfare legislation, when not involved with 
a constitutionally protected freedom such as interstate 
travel, is not subject to a compelling interest test be­
cause it is “ a state regulation in the social and econom­
ic field . . . .” 117 Whether welfare regulation is not 
subject to a compelling interest test because it does 
not involve a fundamental interest or because it does 
involve economic and social regulation, the result in 
Dandridge creates difficulties for applying a compel-

H5397 U.S. 471 (1970).
116See Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 264-65 (1969) : Shapiro v. Thomp­

son, 394 U.S. 618 (1969). ^ P
m 397 U.S. at 484; accord, Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U.S. 78 (1971).



m

ling interest test in Serrano. It is hard to argue that an 
affirmative right to education is more important than 
an affirmative r i g h t  to subsistence. Education also 
shares the status of welfare as being primarily an eco­
nomic and social regulation despite its avowed mind- 
forming purpose. Most of the reasons given by the 
Serrano court for the fundamentality of education re­
late to economic or social factors. Moreover, as noted 
by Professor Brest, “ it is not obvious that educational 
finance systems embody economic judgments that are 
any less complex, intuitive, and ultimately nonjusti- 
ciable than those inherent in welfare legislation.” 118

118Brest, supra note 74, at 615. The recent Supreme Court decision in Pal­
mer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971), in which the Court upheld the right of 
a city to close its municipal swimming pools rather than operate them on an 
integrated basis, is also relevant to the issue of the fundamentality of education. 
In so holding, the Court distinguished prior cases refusing to permit a school 
district to close its schools in order to avoid a desegregation order. The Cali- 
for Supreme Court quoted a statement of the majority opinion in Palmer 
distinguishing swimming pools from schools: “ Of course that case [a school 
closing case] did not involve swimming pools but rather public schools, an 
enterprise we have described as ‘perhaps the most important function of state 
and local governments.’ Brown v. Board of Education, supra at 493.” 5 Cal. 
3d at 609 n.26, 487 P.2d at 1258-59 n.26, 96 Cal. Rptr. at 618-19 n.26.

That quotation was taken out of context by the California court, and when 
the entire case is reviewed, it is clear that the majority opinion and a number 
of other opinions in the case purposefully refused to draw a distinction be­
tween schools and swimming pools that would give greater constitutional 
protection to the former. The quotation cited above was from a footnote in 
the Palmer opinion in which Justice Black, writing for the Court, sought to 
distinguish a prior summary affirmance of a lower court decision invalidating 
Louisiana statutes empowering the governor to close any school ordered to 
integrate, or to close all schools in the state if one were integrated. The first 
difficulty with the quotation is that the sentence following it in the Palmer 
footnote stated: “ More important, the laws struck down in Bush were part of 
an elaborate package of legislation through which Louisiana sought to main­
tain public education on a segregated basis, not to end public education.” 
403 U.S. at 221 (emphasis added).

Moreover, the principal school closing case discussed in Palmer was Griffin 
v. County School Bd., 377 U.S. 218 (1964), an opinion by Mr. Justice Black 
that invalidated school closings in one Virginia district to avoid desegregation 
while other schools in the state remained open. In distinguishing Griffin, Justice 
Black did not even mention a special status for schools, but rather relied ex­
clusively on other differences between that case and Palmer, principally the 
fact that Griffin did not involve a complete shutdown.

In a concurrence, Mr. Justice Blackmum did indicate that he saw a dif-



—64

I V .  T h e  Serrano R e s p o n s e : A n  U n c e r t a i n  P o r t e n t  

f o r  E d u c a t i o n  a n d  E q u a l  P r o t e c t i o n

Serrano’s “ fundamental interest”  analysis of edu­
cation is doubtful both logically and in terms of Su­
preme Court authority. Yet one cannot deny educa­
tion’s importance or avoid the conclusion that society 
must carefully scrutinize its distribution. The moral 
case is strong for a doctrine of equal educational op­
portunity that would limit differential treatment of 
educational entitlement. The questions that arise in 
adopting Serrano and a federal constitutional stan­
dard as the remedy for this moral need are not an­
swered solely according to one’s view of the impor­
tance o f education. There remains for studied consid­
eration the wisdom of yielding this role to the courts, 
and of attempting to cure societal problems with broad 
constitutional precepts.

The California Supreme Court, finding an inher­
ently suspect wealth classification as well as a funda­
mental interest in the school financing system, required
ference between schools and swimming pools. He stated as one of the 3 factors 
that influenced him in reaching the conclusion that swimming pools could 
be closed: “ The pools are not part of the city’s educational system. They are 
a general municipal service of the nice-to-have but not essential variety and 
they are a service, perhaps a luxury, not enjoyed by many communities.” 403 
U.o. at 4^9. While this statement distinguishes schools from swimming pools 
it does not distinguish education from police, fire, welfare, or other common 
municipal services.

Moreover in their respective dissents in Palmer, both Justice Douglas 
and Justice Marshall rejected any special status for schools that distinguishes 
them from swimming pools. Justice Douglas stated: “ I conclude that though 
a State may discontinue any of its municipal services— such as schools, parks, 
pools, athletic fields, and the like— it may not do so for the purpose of ner' 
petuatmg or installing apartheid or because it finds life in a multi-racial 
community difficult or unpleasant.”  Id. at 239. Justice Marshall also equated 
schools with swimming pools or golf courses in conceding that a state‘ could 
close them if it had a proper basis to do so.



— 65—

that the system’s inequities be justified bv a compelling- 
state interest. The court was clearly correct in finding 
that the system, when compared with its equal wealth 
alternatives, could not withstand this stricter equal 
protection test. The question remains, however, whe­
ther an equal wealth alternative like district power- 
equalizing that still permits geographic disparities can 
itself survive a compelling interest test. For the rea­
sons stated above concerning the pervasive societal 
sense that one cannot prevent people from trying to 
obtain a better education for their children, it is prob­
able that district power equalizing could withstand 
strict scrutiny. This conclusion, however, is far from 
certain.118

U9The equal wealth formulation, which permits district power equalizing, 
is easiest understood as a constitutional attempt to equalize educational ex­
penditures, with some inequality permitted as an accommodation to other 
interests. This is the equal protection formulation discussed in the text above, 
and used by the Serrano, Van Dusartz and Rodriguez courts.

One could argue for the equal wealth standard independently of equaliza­
tion of expenditures, however. Such an argument would have to support a 
constitutional norm that each student, or each taxpayer, is entitled to live in 
a district that has an equal resource base for education. Such a norm is diffi­
cult to construct and neither the California Supreme Court nor the authors 
of Private Wealth and Public Education in their development of Proposi­
tion 1 have even attempted to state or support it. A recent article by pro­
fessor Ferdinand P. Schoettle, The Equal Protection Clause in Public Educa­
tion, 71 C o l u m . L. R ev . 1355, 1402-12 (1971), does make just such an argu­
ment. He states that lower tax base districts require greater taxpayer sacrifice 
than wealthier districts to raise educational revenue. Since the acceptability 
to voters of tax proposals “varies inversely with the burden,”  id. 1407, “ voters 
in low tax base districts who seek to increase educational appropriations are 
forced to assume a proportionally heavier burden of electoral persuasion than 
those who wish to achieve an identical goal in the more affluent districts.” 
Id. This electoral burden, which varies from district to district, bears no 
reasonable relationship to a legitimate state policy and thus denies equal pro­
tection under a Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962) voting rights rationale. 
Professor Schoettle concedes that this approach leaves the field of education 
completely and would apply to all decisions of monetary issues faced by local 
governing bodies. He also concedes that his constitutional argument does not 
depend on poverty as a classification, but applies to all relative taxpayer dis­
advantage. He concludes that his analysis would not compel absolute equaliza­
tion or elimination of local tax bases but only reduction of the gross wealth 
disparities to the point where they no longer affect the electoral persuasiveness



— 66—

On the other hand, it is doubtful that the Serrano 
holding requires this stricter equal protection test to 
justify an equal wealth system like district power 
equalizing. Serrano employed the compelling interest 
test because it found a combination of a wealth classi­
fication and a fundamental interest.120 District power 
equalizing satisfies the former test since the revenue 
it produces is based, not on district wealth, but on dis­
trict tax effort. District power equalizing, then, would 
not have to meet a compelling interest test, and could 
be upheld on only the rational basis analysis.

This conclusion, however, points up the fundamen­
tal theoretical p r o b 1 e m in the Serrano approach. 
Viewed from the perspective of the child and his fam­
ily ’s interest in equal education, the current system 
and district power equalizing suffer the same inade-
of adherents to the same goal among different districts.

While provocative, the Schoettle thesis is ultimately unconvincing. It has 
all the difficulties of the lack of a manageable judicial standard that Serrano 
and Proposition 1 rightly try to avoid. These same difficulties of measur­
ing subtleties of differential political power are what compelled the United 
States Supreme Court to reject an argument similar to Professor Schoettle’s 
in Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124 (1971), concerning at-large elections, 
even in a racial context. Moreover, his theory would logically invalidate any 
number of things that affect electoral power unequally including multimem­
ber districts, single-party districts, and the seniority and committee systems 
in legislatures. Finally, all the electoral cases that Professor Schoettle cites in­
volve inequalities among electors in the same political entity, that is, electors 
competing for statewide decisionmaking influence. Thus in Baker v. Carr, the 
constitutional vice was unequal weighing, by district, of voters in relation to 
their ability to influence the state legislature. Professor Schoettle’s Serrano 
analysis, however, expressly eschews such a rationale as being foreclosed by 
James v. Valtierra, 402 U.S. 137 (1971). His rationale, rather,ds that electors 
of a poor district have less internal district power than do those of wealthy dis­
tricts. He thus posits lack of pure horizontal equality of voters in different 
areas, with no racial or poverty components and regardless of the issues in­
volved, as a basis for invalidating the universal American system of local gov­
ernment financing. This lack of horizontal equality is said to make the system 
“ irrational.”  Yet a system that provides that local resources should be available 
to local government to finance its needs is clearly not irrational.

1205ee note 22 supra.



— 67-

quaeies. Neither is a wealth classification; they are 
both residence classifications in their actual effects. To 
the extent that expenditures are related to educational 
quality, the child receives a poorer education whether 
he lives in a poor district or simply one that under­
values education.

Since the court’s equal wealth standard allows for 
these continued educational disparities, the essential 
concern of Serrano is not the school child but the tax­
payer. The California court has spawned a new, but 
perhaps logically inevitable corollary to Proposition 1: 
The economic burden of public education may not be 
a function of wealth other than the wealth of the state 
as a whole. As such the principle of Serrano cannot 
realistically be limited to education, but applies to all 
burdens of taxation.



APPENDIX “ B”

AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 22, 1972 
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 16, 1972 
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY MAY 24, 1972 
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY MAY 3, 1972

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—1972 REGULAR SESSION

ASSEMBLY B ILL No. 1283

In trod uced  b y  the A ssem b ly  C o m m ittee  on E du cation  (L eroy  
F . G reen e (C h a irm an ), C h a co n  (V ice  C h a irm a n ), Arnett, 
C lin e , C o ry , D e n t, D u n la p , F on g , Bill G reen e, K eysor, 
L ew is, M a d d y , M cA lister, R yan, and V aseoueeU os) and  
M u rp h y

(A ssigned to Arnett)

March 15, 1972

REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

An act to amend Sections 6741, 17300, 17303.5, 17414, 17417, 
17503, 17603.5, 17651, 17654.5, 17655.5,17664, 17665, 18102.8, 
18102.9,18102.10,18355,18358,18401, 20404, and20806 of, to 
add Sections 13520.3, 17301, 17301.1, 17301.2, 17301.3, 17653, 
17662, 17662.3, 17662.5, 18102, and 20751 to, to add Chapter 
6.10 (commencing with Section 6499.230) to Division 6 of, 
to add Chapter 1.7 (commencing with Section 17270) to, 
and Article 3 (commencing with Section 17701) to Chapter 
3 o f Division 14 of, to repeal Sections 1835, 5661, 6854, 6855, 
6913.1, 13704, 14657, 14758, 17301, 17656, 17660, 17662,
17665.5, 18102, 18102.2, 18102.4, 18102.6, 20751, 20800,
20801.5.20802.8.20807.20808.20808.5, and20816o f to repeal 
Article 2.1 (commencing with Section 17671), Article 2.5 
(commencing with Section 17680), Article 3 (commencing



AB 1283 —  2 —

with Section 17701), Article 4 (commencing with Section 
17751), Article 5 (commencing with Section 17801), Article 
7 (commencing with Section 17901), Article 7.1 
(commencing with Section 17920), Article 7.2 
(commencing with Section 17940), and Article 8 
(commencing with Section 17951) o f Chapter 3 o f Division 
14 of, to amend the heading o f Article 2 (commencing with 
Section 17651) o f Chapter 3 ofDivision 14 of, the Education 
Code, relating to the financial support o f public education, 
making an appropriation therefor.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AB 1283, as amended, Arnett (Ed.). School finance. 
Provides for revised system of allocation of state support for 

public elementary and high schools, such system being based 
upon a specified percentage of the current expense of 
education, as defined.

Provides for computation of maximum expenditures by 
such school districts.

Specifies system whereby school districts set local tax rates, 
but prescribed amount of proceeds thereof revert to School 
District Wealth Equalization Fund, for redistribution to 
school districts based upon district’s ratio of assessed valuation 
to a.d.a. to statewide average ratio of assessed valuation to 
a.d.a.

Deletes existing provisions re computation, allocation, and 
apportionment of amounts denoted as “basic state aid,” 
equalization aid,” and “supplemental support” for 

elementary school, high school, and community college 
levels.

Eliminates use of computational tax rates as a factor in 
computing state and local shares of foundation program 
support.

Eliminates unification and class size reduction bonuses in 
apportionment of state school funds.

Eliminates areawide school support programs for areas 
included in defeated unification proposals.

Revises method of computing the amount of allowances for 
physically handicapped, mentally retarded, and educationally 
handicapped pupils. Revises allowances for special



— 3 — AB 1283

transportation programs.
Makes numerous related changes.
Vote-—Majority; Appropriation—Yes;

Fiscal Committee—Yes.

The people o f the State o f California do enact as follows:

1 S e c t i o n  1. It is the intent o f  the Legislature in this
2 act to provide for the financial support of public
3 education in the following manner:
4 (a) A funding mechanism which (1) minimizes the
5 wealth disparities that presently exist between school
6 districts and (2) enables every child in the state to
7 receive an equal education opportunity.
8 (b) An adequate level of financial support for the
9 education of every child through a combination of a

10 reasonable level of state assistance and local effort.
11 (c) An orderly transition from the present system to a
12 new system of school finance.
13 (d) A system whereby at least §& 50 percent of the
14 educational support is provided from the General Fund
15 in the State Treasury.
16 (e) A reasonable level of annual increases from the
17 state to meet the pressures of inflation without the
18 necessity of annual legislative action.
19 (f) The continuation of local control of educational
20 programs and the level of local property tax rates.
21 (g) A mechanism of expenditure controls to replace
22 the present ineffective method of property tax
23 limitations.
24 (h) A system fe? the The elimination of most of the
25 presently authorized school district permissive override
26 taxes.
27 (i) A system for minimum reliance on the property tax
28 for the support of public education.
29 SEC. 2. Section 1835 of the Education Code is
30 repealed.
31 Sec. 3. Section 5661 of the Education Code is
32 repealed.
33 Sec. 3.5. Chapter 6.10 (commencing with Section



AB 1283 —  4

1 6499.230) is added to Division 6 of the Education Code,
2 to read:
3
4  C h a p t e r  6 . 1 0 .  E d u c a t i o n a l l y  D i s a d v a n t a g e d

5  Y o u t h  P r o g r a m s

6
7 6499.230. It is the intent of the Legislature to provide
8 quality educational opportunities for all children in the
9 California public schools. The Legislature recognizes that

10 because of differences in family income, differing
11 language barriers, and pupil transiency, differing levels of
12 financial aid are necessary to provide quality education
13 for all students.
14 6499.231. From the funds appropriated by the
15 Legislature for the purposes of this chapter, the
1 6  Superintendent of Public Instruction, with the approval
17 of the State Board of Education, shall administer this
18 chapter and make apportionments to school districts to
19 meet the total approved expense of the school districts
20 incurred in establishing education programs for pupils
21 who qualify economically and educationally in preschool,
22 kindergarten, or any of grades 1 through 12, inclusive.
23 Nothing in this chapter shall in any way preclude the use
24 of federal funds for educationally disadvantaged youth.
25 6499.232. Maximum apportionments allowable to
26 school districts shall be determined by the following
27 factors:
28 (a) An index of “potential impact of
29 bilingual-bicultural pupils” determined by dividing the
30 percent of pupils in the district with Spanish and Oriental
31 surnames, as determined by the annual ethnic survey
32 conducted by the Department of Education, by the
33 statewide average percentage of such pupils for unified,
34 e lem en ta ry , or secondary districts, as appropriate.
35 (b) A ratio of the district’s “index of family poverty,”
36 defined as the district’s Elementary and Secondary
37 Education Act, Title I entitlement, divided by its average
38 daily attendance in grades 1 through 12, or any thereof
39 maintained, divided in turn by the state average index of
40 family poverty for unified, elementary, or secondary



AB 1283

1 districts, as appropriate.
2 (c) A ratio of the district’s “ index of pupil transiency,”
3 as computed from the relationship between the district’s
4 average daily attendance and its total annual enrollment,
5 divided by the state average index of pupil transiency for
6 unified, elementary, or secondary districts, as
7 appropriate.
8 The district’s total maximum apportionment under this
9 chapter shall be determined by computing the product of

10 (1) one-third the sum of the above three factors, (2) the
11 number of pupils receiving aid for dependent children
12 support, and (3) a constant amount of three hundred
13 dollars ($300), or such amount as the Superintendent of
14 Public Instruction may determine so that the sum of all
15 allocations will not exceed the funds appropriated by the
16 Legislature for the purposes of this chapter.
17 6499.233. For the fiscal year 1972-1973, the
18 superintendent shall allocate to local districts an amount
19 equal to not less than 40 percent of the total amount
20 computed under Section 6499.232. For the fiscal year
21 1973-1974, the superintendent shall allocate not less than
22 40 percent of the total amount so computed and not more
23 than 90 percent of the amount computed. For the
24 1974-1975 fiscal year and thereafter, the superintendent
25 shall allocate to each district not less than 40 percent nor
26 more than 100 percent of the amount so computed.
27 6499.234. In approving programs under this chapter,
28 the State Board of Education shall give due consideration
29 to the effectiveness of the program and shall not continue
30 in operation any program that, upon evaluation, has been
31 shown to be of low effectiveness and which has only
32 limited possibility of improved effectiveness.
33 For the fiscal year 1973-1974 and for each year
34 thereafter, districts which demonstrate a high degree of
35 program effectiveness shall receive amounts up to their
36 entitlement limits. Districts which demonstrate low
37 levels of program effectiveness shall continue to receive
38 their initial apportionments but the Superintendent of
39 Public Instruction may reduce the additional computed
40 apportionments due such districts, if he determines that

— 5 —



AB 1283

1 such programs have limited possibilities of improved
2 achievement.
3 6499.235. The Superintendent of Public Instruction
4 shall apportion the funds available for programs in accord
5 with procedures specified in this chapter and policies
6 which may be adopted by the State Board of Education.
7 Funds shall be allocated to each district within its
8 entitlement based upon a plan submitted by the district
9 to the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and

10 approved by the State Board of Education. The plan shall
11 include (1) an explicit statement of what the district
12 seeks to accomplish, (2) a description of the program and
13 activities designed to achieve these purposes, and (3) a
14 planned program of annual evaluation, including a
15 statement of the criteria to be used to measure the
16 effectiveness of the program.
17 6499.236. The State Board of Education shall adopt
18 regulations setting forth the standards and criteria to be
19 used in the administration, monitoring, evaluation, and
20 dissemination of programs submitted for consideration
21 under this chapter; 1 percent of the total appropriation
22 for the purposes of this chapter shall be retained by the
23 Department of Education for these purposes. Funds
24 appropriated for the purposes of this chapter not
25 allocated as previously specified shall be allocated by the
26 State Board of Education to promote the intent of this
27 chapter to provide education programs to as many
28 eligible pupils as possible and to stimulate the
29 development, implementation, and evaluation of
30 innovative programs.
31 6499.237. The Superintendent of Public Instruction
32 shall submit annually to the Governor and to each house
33 of the Legislature a report evaluating the programs
34 established pursuant to this chapter, together with his
35 recommendations concerning whether the same should
36 be continued in operation.
37 6499.238. There is hereby appropriated from the
38 General Fund in the State Treasury to the State School
39 Fund for the fiscal year 1972-1973 an amount equal to
40 twenty-one dollars and fifty cents ($21.50) multiplied by

—  6 —



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

AB 1283

the total statewide average daily attendance of the 
preceding fiscal year in kindergarten and grades 1 to 12, 
inclusive, to be used for the purposes of Chapter 6.10 
(commencing with Section 6499.230) of Division 6 of the 
Education Code. For the fiscal year 1973-1974 the 
amount per such unit of average daily attendance shall be 
forty-three dollars ($43); and for the fiscal year 1974-1975 
and thereafter, it shall be fifty-three dollars and 
seventy-five cents ($53.75).

SEC. 4. Section 6741 of the Education Code is 
amended to read:

6741. A student shall be deemed to be a resident of 
the high school district in which he lived at the time of 
his admission to the program and the excess cost for a 
school year of educating such student shall be paid by the 
high school district of which he is a resident to the county 
superintendent who is providing education for the 
students. The excess cost shall be determined by dividing 
the total current expense of education as defined in 
subdivision (b) o f  Section 17503 and also excluding 
expense of boarding and lodging during such school year 
by the total number of units of average daily attendance 
in such school or classes during such school year, less state 
and federal apportionments on account of such average 
daily attendance.

Average daily attendance of students shall be 
computed, for purposes of this article, by dividing the 
number of days such student attended the schools or 
classes by the number of days that the schools or classes 
were taught, except that with respect to a student 
attending such schools or classes for more than 175 days 
in a school year, the average daily attendance shall be 
computed by using the divisor of 175.

For purposes of computing average daily attendance 
180 minutes of class attendance shall be deemed to 
constitute a schoolday, and no more than 15 hours of class 
time per week shall be considered.

Not later than July 15th of each year, the 
superintendent of schools of the county providing 
education for students shall forward his claim for the



AB 1283 — 8 —

1 excess expense reimbursement to the high school district
2 of residence of each student during the preceding school
3 year, and the governing board of such high school district
4 shall upon receipt thereof pay such claims.
5 Sec. 5. Section 6854 of the Education Code is
6 repealed.
7 Sec. 6. Section 6855 of the Education Code is
8 repealed.
9 Sec. 7. Section 6913.1 of the Education Code is

10 repealed.
11 Sec. 8. Section 13520.3 is added to the Education
12 Code, to read:
13 13520.3. When a school district operates on a
14 year-around schedule pursuant to Chapter 7
15 (commencing with Section 32100) of Division 22, the
16 salaries of employees who are employed for the extended
17 school year may be adjusted in accordance with the ratio
18 of the extension of the school year in months bears to the
19 length of the school year in months prior to the
20 commencement of year-around operation. No classroom
21 teacher may be required to participate in a year-around
22 program without his consent.
23 Sec. 9. Section 13704 of the Education Code is
24 repealed.
25 Sec. 10. Section 14657 of the Education Code is
26 repealed.
27 Sec. 11. Section 14758 of the Education Code is
28 repealed.
29 Sec. 12. Chapter 1.7 (commencing with Section
30 17270) is added to Division 14 of the Education Code, to
31 read:
32
33 C h a p t e r  1.7. A d j u s t m e n t s  t o  U s a b l e  A s s e s s e d

34 V a l u a t i o n

35
36 17270. The Legislature hereby declares that its intent
37 in enacting this chapter is to provide a reasonable and
38 equitable method for ascertaining the value of property
39 located within school districts for use in connection with
40 the administration of state laws providing for the



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

AB 1283

allocation of state funds to such districts for school 
purposes on the basis of value and provide for more equal 
educational opportunity for students residing in districts 
of varying wealth per unit of average daily attendance 
and to improve the equity among taxpayers residing in or 
owning property in districts of varying wealth.

The Legislature hereby further declares that in 
enacting this chapter it has no intention to affect in any 
way, whether directly or indirectly, any determination of 
the assessed value of property for tax purposes.

17271. Each school district shall report to the 
Superintendent of Public Instruction:

(a) The total assessed valuation of the district; and
(b) The amount equal to:
(1) Ten percent of the total assessed valuation in the 

1972-1973 fiscal year.
(2) Twenty percent of the total assessed valuation in 

the 1973-1974 fiscal year.
(3) Thirty percent of the total assessed valuation in the

1974- 1975 fiscal year.
(4) Forty percent of the total assessed valuation in the

1975- 1976 fiscal year.
(5) Fifty percent of the total assessed valuation in the

1976- 1977 fiscal year and following,
17272. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall 

compute the total amounts reported to him pursuant to 
subdivision (b-)» of Section 17271 for each type of district. 
He shall make a separate computation for elementary 
school districts, high school districts, and unified school 
districts. He shall divide the total for each type of district 
by the statewide average daily attendance for the 
preceding fiscal year for each type of district. The 
amount computed pursuant to this section is the assessed 
valuation redistribution amount per unit of average daily 
attendance for each type of district.

17273. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall 
compute for each school district the amount derived by 
multiplying the assessed valuation redistribution amount 
per unit of average daily attendance by the average daily 
attendance of the district for the preceding fiscal year.

— 9 —



AB 1283 10 —

1 The amount computed pursuant to this section is the
2 redistribution amount.
3 17273.5. The “district assessed valuation” for each
4 district is the total assessed valuation minus the amount
5 reported for it pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section
6 17271 plus the redistribution amount for the type of
7 district computed pursuant to Section 17273.
8 17274. (a) Each school district shall compute the
9 amount which the revenue derived from the levy and

10 collection of school district taxes would have been if it
11 had been collected and been based upon an adjusted
12 assessed valuation computed pursuant to Section 17273.5
13 For the purpose of this subdivision chapter, the school
14 district tax shall not include any tax levied and collected
15 pursuant to Sections 15517, 15518, 16633, 16635, 16645.9,
16 19443, 19572, 19619, 19687, 19695, or 22101.
17 (b) Each district shall compute the total amount of
18 revenue derived from the levy of school district taxes on
19 property lying within the district.
20 (c) If the amount computed pursuant to subdivision
21 (a) is less than the amount computed pursuant to
22 subdivision (b), the difference shall be transmitted to the
23 School District Wealth Equalization Fund.
24 (d) If the amount computed pursuant to subdivision
25 (a) is more than the amount computed pursuant to
26 subdivision (b), the Superintendent of Public Instruction
27 shall allow to the district an amount equal to such
28 difference from the School District Wealth Equalization
29 Fund.
30 Sec. 13. Section 17300 of the Education Code is
31 amended to read:
32 17300. It is the intent of the Legislature that the
33 administration of the laws governing the financial
34 support of the public school system in this state be
35 conducted within the purview of the following principles
36 and policies:
37 The system of public school support should be designed
38 to strengthen and encourage local responsibility for
39 .control of public education. Local school districts should
40 be so organized that they can facilitate the provision of



—  11 — AB 1283

1 full educational opportunities for all who attend the
2 public schools. Local control is best accomplished by the
3 development of strong, vigorous, and properly organized
4 local school administrative units. It is the state’s
5 responsibility to create or facilitate the creation of local
6 school districts of sufficient size to properly discharge
7 local responsibilities and to spend the tax dollar
8 effectively.
9 Effective local control requires that all local

10 administrative units contribute to the support of school
11 budgets in proportion to their respective abilities, and
12 that all have such flexibility in their taxing programs as
13 will readily permit of progress in the improvement of the
14 educational program. Effective local control requires a
15 local taxing power, and a local tax base which is not
16 unduly restricted or overburdened.
17 The system of public school support should assure that
18 state, local, and other funds are adequate for the support
19 of a realistic educational program. It is unrealistic and
20 unfair to the less wealthy districts to provide for only a
21 part of the financing necessary for an adequate
22 educational program.
23 The system of public school support should permit and
24 encourage local school districts to provide and support
25 improved district organization and educational
26 programs. The system of public school support should
27 prohibit the introduction of undesirable organization and
28 educational practices, and should discourage any such
29 practices now in effect. Improvement of programs in
30 particular districts is in the interests of the state as a
31 whole as well as of the people in individual districts, since
32 the excellence of the programs in some districts will tend
33 to bring about program improvement in other districts.
34 The system of public school support should make
35 provision for the apportionment of state funds to local
36 school districts on a strictly objective basis that can be
37 computed as well by the local districts as by the state. The
38 principle of local responsibility requires that the granting
39 of discretionary powers to state officials over the
40 distribution of state aid and the granting to these officials



AB 1283 —  12 —

1 of the power to impose undue restriction on the use of
2 funds and the conduct of educational programs at the
3 local level be avoided.
4 The system of public school support should effect a
5 partnership between the state, the county, and the local
6 district, with each participating equitably in accordance
7 with its relative ability. The respective abilities should be
8 combined to provide a financial plan between the state
9 and the local agencies for public school support. Toward

10 this support program, each county and district, through
11 a uniform method should contribute in accordance with
12 its true financial ability.
13 The system of public school support should provide for
14 essential educational opportunities for all who attend the
15 public schools. Provision should be made for adequate
16 financing of all educational services.
17 The broader based taxing power of the state should be
18 utilized to raise the level of financial support in the
19 properly organized but financially weak districts of the
20 state, thus contributing greatly to the equalization of
21 educational opportunity for the students residing
22 therein. It should also be used to provide a minimum
23 amount of guaranteed support to all districts, for such
24 state assistance serves to develop among all districts a
25 sense of responsibility to the entire system of public
26 education in the state. State assistance to all districts also
27 would create a tax leeway for the exercise of local
28 initiative.
29 The Legislature further declares that in order to
30 reduce the burden of inequitable property taxation it is
31 in the best interest of the state to provide, from other
32 than ad valorem property taxes, a predominate portion of
33 the statewide cost of education in the elementary and
34 secondary schools of the state. The Legislature further
35 declares that the funds to be provided are required in
36 order to reduce the disproportionate demand upon
37 property taxpayers for support of educational services
38 and programs, equalize wide variations in the ability of
39 local communities to support such services and programs,
40 and to assist school districts in meeting increased



— 13 — AB 1283

1 demands due to concentrations of educationally
2 disadvantaged pupils.
3 In recognition of these disparities it is the intent of the
4 Legislature to apportion funds for school purposes in such
5 a manner as to provide adequate educational programs
6 for all students regardless of where they reside or the
7 wealth of their parents and neighbors.
8 In implementing its intent the Legislature declares
9 that, although the present system of funding does not

10 meet desirable criteria, sudden changes of great
11 magnitude in the system of public school finance would
12 disrupt the educational system of many districts and
13 thereby damage the whole public school system of the
14 state, the educational welfare of all students, and the
15 economy of the state; therefore, rapid change is
16 undesirable and unacceptable.
17 Accordingly, the Legislature declares its intent to
18 improve with all reasonable and deliberate speed,
19 financial support of education in districts which have less
20 than the statewide average assessed valuation per unit of
21 average daily attendance as rapidly as those districts can
22 efficiently utilize additional support, and at the same
23 time allow districts with more than the statewide assessed
24 valuation per unit of average daily attendance sufficient
25 time to readjust their programs to new methods of
26 financing to avoid precipitous disruption of present
27 programs.
28 It is further the intent of the Legislature to study the
29 possibility of adopting an apportionment system based
30 upon weighted units of average daily attendance.
31 Sec. 14. Section 17301 of the Education Code is
32 repealed.
33 Sec. 15. Section 17301 is added to the Education
34 Code, to read:
35 17301. The State Controller shall during each fiscal
36 year transfer from the General Fund of the state to the
37 State School Fund such sums as are necessary for the state
38 to provide a specified percentage of the current expense
39 of education, as defined by subdivision -fb)- (c) of Section
40 17503, for each pupil in average daily attendance during



AB 1283 14

1 the preceding fiscal year credited to all kindergarten,
2 elementary and high schools in the state and to the
3 county school tuition funds, as certified by the
4 Superintendent of Public Instruction. For the 1972-1973
5 and 1973-1974 fiscal years the percentage shall be 45
6 percent, and for the 1974-1975 fiscal year, and each fiscal
7 year thereafter, the percentage shall be 50 percent. The
8 In the 1972-1973 fiscal year and each fiscal year
9 thereafter, the amounts so transferred shall be increased

10 by an amount which shall reflect the application of an
11 adjustment index developed cooperatively by the
12 Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Legislative
13 Analyst, and the Director of Finance. This adjustment
14 index shall reflect the expected change in the cost of a
15 basic educational program, plus any additional costs
16 mandated by the Legislature, for the fiscal year under
17 consideration. The Controller shall adjust such transfers
18 to reflect increases or decreases as estimated by the
19 Superintendent of Public Instruction for the current year
20 in the statewide units of average daily attendance in the
21 kindergartens, elementary, and high schools of the state.
22 The Controller shall also transfer two hundred
23 ninety-eight dollars and thirty-eight cents ($298.38) from
24 the General Fund to the State School Fund per pupil in
25 average daily attendance credited to the community
26 colleges of the state during the preceding fiscal year.
27 SEC. 16. Section 17301.1 is added to the Education
28 Code, to read:
29 17301.1. The State Controller shall also transfer an
30 amount equal to the percentage specified in Section
31 17301 for any new or expanded program trtrtfe©*4«ed ©r
32 required by law which was not uutfaor-izcd ©r required in
33 the preceding fiscal year.
34 SEC. 17. Section 17301.2 is added to the Education
35 Code, to read:
36 17301.2. The State Controller shall also transfer an
37 amount from the General Fund to the School Disrict
38 Wealth Equalization Fund equal to any deficit created in
39 that fund.
40 Sec. 17.5. Section 17301.3 is added to the Education



— 15 — AB 1283

1 Code, to read:
2 17301.3. The State Controller shall also transfer an
3 amount from the General Fund to the State School Fund
4 equal to thirty-eight dollars ($38) multiplied by the
5 average daily attendance credited to all kindergarten,
6 elementary, high school, community college, and adult
7  schools and to county school tuition funds during the
8 preceding fiscal year for expenditure pursuant to Section
9 17303.5.

1 0  S E C . 1 8 .  Section 1 7 3 0 3 . 5  o f  the Education Code is

11 amended to read:
12 17303.5. The amount transferred pursuant to Sections
13 17301 and 17301.3 shall be expended, in part, in
14 accordance with the following schedule:
15 (a) Twenty-one dollars and fifty cents ($21.50)
16 multiplied by the total average daily attendance credited
17 during the preceding school year to elementary school
18 districts which during the preceding school year had less
19 than 901 units of average daily attendance, to high school
20 districts which during the preceding school year had less
21 than 301 units of average daily attendance, and to unified
22 districts which during the preceding school year had less
23 than 1,501 units of average daily attendance, but not to
24 exceed an amount equal to seventy cents ($0.70)
25 multiplied by the average daily attendance credited
26 during the preceding fiscal year to all kindergarten,
27 elementary, high school, community college and adult
28 schools in the state and to county school tuition funds, for
29 allowance to county school service funds pursuant to
30 subdivision (a) of Section 18352.
31 (b) Four dollars and forty cents ($4.40) multiplied by
32 the total average daily attendance credited to all
33 kindergarten, elementary, high school, community
34 college and adult schools in the state and to county school
35 tuition funds during the preceding school year for the
36 purposes of Article 10 (commencing with Section 18051)
37 of Chapter 3 of this division.
38 (c) Nineteen dollars and fifty-two cents ($19.52)
39 multiplied by the total average daily attendance credited
40 to all kindergarten, elementary, high school, community



AB 1283 16

1 college and adult schools in the state and to county school
2 tuition funds during the preceding school year, for the
3 purposes of Sections 18060 and 18062, and Article 11
4 (commencing with Section 18101) of Chapter 3 of this
5 division.
6 (d) Three dollars and six cents ($3.06) multiplied by
7 the total average daily attendance credited to all
8 kindergarten, elementary, high school, community
9 college and adult schools in the state and to county school

10 tuition funds during the preceding school year for
11 allowances to county school service funds pursuant to
12 subdivision (b) of Section 18352.
13 (e) One dollar and sixty-seven cents ($1.67)
14 multiplied by the average daily attendance during the
15 preceding fiscal year credited to all kindergarten,
16 elementary, high school, community college and adult
17 schools in the state and to county school tuition funds for
18 allowances to school districts for the purposes of Section
19 6426.
20 (f) Eight dollars and sixty-five cents ($8.65) multiplied
21 by the average daily attendance during the preceding
22 school year credited to all kindergarten, elementary, high
23 school, community college and adult schools in the state
24 and to county school tuition funds for purposes of
25 Chapter 7.1 (commencing with Section 6750) of Division
26 6.
27 S e c . 19. Section 17414 of the Education Code is
28 amended to read:
29 17414. If during any fiscal year there is apportioned to
30 a school district or to any fund from the State School Fund
31 at least one hundred dollars ($100) more or at least one
32 hundred dollars ($100) less than the amount to which the
33 district or fund was entitled, the Superintendent of
34 Public Instruction, in accordance with regulations that he
35 is herewith authorized to adopt not later than the third
36 succeeding fiscal year shall withhold from, or add to, the
37 apportionment made during such fiscal year, the amount
38 of such excess or deficiency, as the case may be.
39 Notwithstanding, any other provision of this code to the
40 contrary, excesses withheld or deficiencies added by the



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
18
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

— 17 AB 1283

Superintendent of Public Instruction under this section 
shall be added to or allowed from any portion of the State 
School Fund.

SEC. 20. Section 17417 of the Education Code is 
amended to read:

17417. Wherever the attendance of pupils is not 
included in the computation of the average daily 
attendance of a school district for any fiscal year because 
the certification document of the person employed by 
the district to instruct such pupils was not in force during 
the period of such attendance, the governing board of the 
district may, upon payment of the salary of such person 
pursuant to Section 13515, or similar provisions of law, 
report such attendance to the Superintendent of Public 
Instruction during the fiscal year in which such salary is 
paid. Such report shall be made in such form as shall be 
prescribed and furnished by the Superintendent of 
Public Instruction. Thereafter the Superintendent of 
Public Instruction shall add to the apportionment from 
the State School Fund to the district during the next 
succeeding fiscal year or years, as determined by him but 
not exceeding three, the additional amount to which the 
district would have been entitled in the fiscal year next 
succeeding that in which such attendance was not 
included in the computation of the average daily 
attendance of the district if such amount is at least one 
hundred dollars ($100) or more.

Any such additional amount shall be apportioned from 
the State School Fund before any other apportionment 
from such fund is made and shall be allowed from any 
portion of such fund.

SEC. 21. Section 17503 of the Education Code is 
amended to read:

17503. For purposes of this section:
(a) “Salaries of classroom teachers” and “ teacher” 

shall have the same meanings as prescribed by Section 
17200 of this code provided, however, that the cost of all 
health and welfare benefits provided to the teachers by 
the school district shall be included within the meaning 
of salaries of classroom teachers.



AB 1283 — 18 —

1 (b) “Current expense of education” means the gross
2 total expended (not reduced by estimated income or
3 estimated federal and state apportionments) for the
4 purposes classified in the final budget of a school district
5 (except one which, during the preceding fiscal year, had
6 less than 101 units of average daily attendance)
7 submitted to and approved by the county superintendent
8 of schools pursuant to Section 20607 of this code for
9 administration, instruction (including salaries and other

10 expense), health services, operation of plant,
11 maintenance of plant, and fixed charges. “ Current
12 expense of education” shall not include those purposes
13 classified as transportation of pupils, food service,
14 community service, capital outlay, state school building
15 loan repayment; and shall not include the amount
16 expended pursuant to any lease agreement for plant and
17 equipment or the amount expended from funds received
18 from the federal government pursuant to the “Economic
19 Opportunity Act of 1964” or any extension of such act of
20 Congress.
21 (c) For the purposes of Sections 17301, 17654.5,
22 17655.5, 17662, 17664, 17665, and Article 3 (commencing
23 with Section 17701) of this chapter, the current expense
24 of education shall include only state funds apportioned as
25 basic aid, equalizaton aid, supplemental support and
26 additional equalization aid; local funds derived pursuant
27 to subdivision (a) of Section 17274; miscellaneous funds,
28 as defined in Section 17606; and any federal funds
29 allocated as general aid, such as funds allocated pursuant
30 to Public Law 81-874.
31 For 1973-1974 and each fiscal year thereafter, state
32 basic aid, equalization aid, supplemental support, and
33 additional equalization aid shall mean state funds
34 allocated pursuant to Sections 17654.5, 17655.5, 17662,
35 17664, and 17665.
36 The statewide average current expense of education
37 per unit of average daily attendance shall mean the sum
38 of the funds specified by this subdivision received by all
39 districts in the state of the particular type (elementary,
40 high school, or unified) divided by the foundation



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

— 19 — AB 1283

program average daily attendance reported by those 
same districts.

There shall be expended during each fiscal year for 
payment of salaries of classroom teachers:

(a) By an elementary school district, sixty percent 
(60%) of the district’s current expense of education.

(b) By a high school district, fifty percent (50%) of the 
district’s current expense of education,

(c) By a community college district, fifty percent 
(50%) of the district’s current expense of education.

(d) By a unified school district, fifty-five percent 
(55%) of the district’s current expense of education.

If the Superintendent of Public Instruction determines 
that a school district has not expended the applicable 
percentage of current expense of education for the 
payment of salaries of classroom teachers during the 
preceding fiscal year, he shall, in apportionments made to 
the school district from the State School Fund after April 
15 of the current fiscal year, designate an amount of such 
apportionment or apportionments equal to the apparent 
deficiency in district expenditures. Any amount so 
designated by the Superintendent of Public Instruction 
shall be deposited in the county treasury to the credit of 
the school district, but shall be unavailable for 
expenditure by the district pending the determination to 
be made by the Superintendent of Public Instruction on 
any application for exemption which may be submitted 
to the Superintendent of Public Instruction. In the event 
it appears to the governing board of a school district that 
the application of the preceding paragraphs of this 
section during a fiscal year results in serious hardship to 
the district, or in the payment of salaries of classroom 
teachers in excess of the salaries of classroom teachers 
paid by other districts of comparable type and 
functioning under comparable conditions, the board 
may, with the written approval of the county 
superintendent of schools having jurisdiction over the 
district apply to the Superintendent of Public Instruction 
in writing not later than September 15th of the 
succeeding fiscal year for exemption from the



AB 1283 —  20 —

1 requirements of the preceding paragraphs of this section
2 for the fiscal year on account of which the application is
3 made. Upon receipt of such application, duly approved,
4 the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall grant the
5 district exemption for any amount that is less than one
6 thousand dollars ($1,000), and if the amount is one
7 thousand dollars ($1,000), or greater may grant the
8 district exemption, to the extent deemed necessary by
9 him, from such requirements for the fiscal year on

10 account of which the application is made. If such
11 exemption is granted the designated moneys shall be
12 immediately available for expenditure by the school
13 district governing board. If no application for exemption
14 is made or exemption is denied, the Superintendent of
15 Public Instruction shall order the designated amount or
16 amount not exempted to be added to the amounts to be
17 expended for salaries of classroom teachers during the
18 next fiscal year.
19 The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall enforce
20 the requirements prescribed by this section, and may
21 adopt necessary rules and regulations to that end. He may
22 require the submission to him, during the school year, by
23 school district governing boards and county
24 superintendents of schools, of such reports and
25 information as may be necessary to carry out the
26 provisions of this section.
27 Any reference in this code to “current expense o f
28 education as defined in Section 17503” enacted prior to
29 the enactment o f Chapter 1.7 (commencing with Section
30 17270) o f this division shall mean current expense o f
31 education as defined in subdivision (b) o f Section 17503.
32 Sec. 22. Section 17603.5 of the Education Code is
33 amended to read:
34 17603.5. The amounts computed as allowable to any
35 school community college district for state aid shall be
36 reduced by fifty percent (50%) of miscellaneous funds, as
37 defined in Section 17606. In no event shall the reduction
38 exceed the total amount allowable as state aid to the
39 school district for the fiscal yeafr Fer sueh pwpeses;



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

21 — AB 1283

fey a unified school dlstr-iet-,- shall fee allocated te the 
kmdorgartcn and elementary, high seheel and 
community college grades, respectively, ©n the basis e4 
the preperti©© ©f the distriet’s total average daily 
attendance in eaeh sueh grade level-, and the previsions 
©f Section 17601 shall fee applicable, for the fiscal year.

Should the amount of miscellaneous funds, as defined 
in Section 17606, actually received by a school community 
college district for any fiscal year be more or less than that 
reported to the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the 
Superintendent of Public Instruction shall during the 
fiscal year next succeeding withhold from or add to the 
apportionment made to the district from the State School 
Fund the amount of the excess or deficiency in the 
apportionment of state aid from the State School Fund 
for the preceding year, if the amount of the excess or 
deficiency in such apportionment was one hundred 
dollars ($100) or more.

SEC. 23. The heading of Article 2 (commencing with 
Section 17651) of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the 
Education Code is amended to read:

Article 2. Computation of Foundation Programs and 
School Support for School Districts

S e c . 24. Section 17651 of the Education Code is 
amended to read:

17651. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall 
compute for each school district the amount of school 
support therefor, in the manner prescribed by this 
article.

SEC. 25. Section 17653 is added to the Education 
Code, to read:

17653. No aid in excess of one hundred twenty dollars 
($120) per unit of average daily attendance shall be 
allowed unless there shall have been levied pursuant to 
this code, for a district during the fiscal year, a tax, 
exclusive of taxes levied under Sections 1822,2, 1825, 
16633,16635,16645.9,19443,19619,20801, and 22101, of not 
less than one dollar ($1) if an elementary district, eighty



AB 1283 —  22 —

1 cents ($0.80) if a high school district, one dollar and
2 eighty cents ($1.80) i f  a unified school district, and
3 twenty-five cents ($0.25) if a community college district.
4 S e c . 2 6 .  Section 1 7 6 5 4 . 5  of the Education Code is

5 amended to read:
6 17654.5. For each elementary school district which
7 maintains only one school with an average daily
8 attendance of less than 101, he shall make one of the
9 following computations, whichever provides the lesser

10 amount:
11 (1) For each small school which has an average daily
12 attendance during the fiscal year of less than 26, exclusive
13 of pupils attending the seventh and eighth grades of a
14 junior high school, and for which school at least one
15 teacher was hired full time, he shall compute for the the
16 product of 25 multiplied by the appropriate percentage
17 specified in Section 17301 multiplied by the relative
18 support factor specified in Section 17662.5 multiplied by
19 the statewide average current expense of education for
20 elementary districts as determined pursuant to
21 subdivision (c) of Section 17503.
22 (2) For each small school which has an average daily
23 attendance during the fiscal year of 26 or more and less
24 than 51, exclusive of pupils attending the seventh and
25 eighth grades of a junior high school, and for which school
26 at least two teachers were hired full time for more than
27 one-half of the days schools were maintained, he shall
28 compute for the district the product of 50 multiplied by
29 the appropriate percentage specified in Section 17301
30 multiplied by the relative support factor specified in
31 Section 17662.5 multiplied by the statewide average
32 current expense of education for elementary districts as
33 determined pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 17503.
34 (3) For each small school which has an average daily
35 attendance during the fiscal year of 51 or more but less
36 than 76, exclusive of pupils attending the seventh and
37 eighth grades of a junior high school, and for which school
38 three teachers were hired full time for more than
39 one-half of the days schools were maintained, he shall
40 compute for the district the product of 75 multiplied by



23 — AB 1283

1 the relative support percentage specified in Section
2 17301 multiplied by the appropriate factor specified in
3 Section 17662.5 multiplied by the statewide average
4 current expense of education for elementary districts as
5 determined pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 17503.
6 (4) For each small school which has an average daily
7 attendance during the fiscal year of 76 or more and less
8 than 101, exclusive of pupils attending the seventh and
9 eighth grades of a junior high school, and for which school

10 four teachers were hired full time for more than one-half
11 of the days schools were maintained, he shall compute for
12 the district the product of 100 multiplied by the
13 appropriate percentage specified in Section 17301
14 multiplied by the appropriate relative support factor
15 specified in Section 47663 17662.5 multiplied by the
16 statewide average current expense o f education for
17 elementary districts as determined pursuant to
18 subdivision (c) o f Section 17503.
19 Sec. 27. Section 17655.5 of the Education Code is
20 amended to read:
21 17655.5. (a) For each district on account of each
22 necessary small school (giving regard to the number of
23 teachers actually employed or average daily attendance),
24 he shall make one of the following computations,
25 whichever provides the lesser amount:
26 (1) For each necessary small school which has an
27 average daily attendance during the fiscal year of less
28 than 26, exclusive of pupils attending the seventh and
29 eighth grades of a junior high school, and for which school
30 at least one teacher was hired full time, he shall compute
31 for the district the product of 25 multiplied by the
32 appropriate percentage specified in Section 17301
33 multiplied by the appropriate relative support factor
34 specified in Section 47663 17662.5 multiplied by the
35 statewide average current expense o f education for
36 elementary districts as determined pursuant to
37 subdivision (c) o f Section 17503.
38 12) For each necessary small school which has an
39 a v e r a g e  daily attendance during the fiscal year of 26 or
40 more and less than 51, exclusive of pupils attending the



AB 1283 — 24 —

1 seventh and eighth grades of a junior high school, and for
2 which school at least two teachers were hired full time for
3 more than one-half of the days schools were maintained,
4 he shall compute for the district the product of 50
5 multiplied by the appropriate percentage specified in
6 Section 17301 multiplied by the appropriate relative
7 support factor specified in Section 4-7-662 17662.5
8 multiplied by the statewide average current expense o f
9 education for elementary districts as determined

10 pun uant to subdivision (c) o f  Section 17503.
11 (3) For each necessary small school which has an
12 average daily attendance during the fiscal year of 51 or
13 more but less than 76, exclusive of pupils attending the
14 seventh and eighth grades of a junior high school, and for
15 which school three teachers were hired full time for more
16 than one-half of the days schools were maintained, he
17 shall compute for the district the product of 75 multiplied
18 by the appropriate percentage specified in Section 17301
19 multiplied by the appropriate relative support factor
20 specified in Section 47662 17662.5 multiplied by the
21 statewide average current expense o f education for
22 elementary districts as determined pursuant to
23 subdivision (c) o f Section 17503.
24 (4) For each necessary small school which has an
25 average daily attendance during the fiscal year of 76 or
26 more and less than 101, exclusive of pupils attending the
27 seventh and eighth grades of a junior high school, and for
28 which school four teachers were hired full time for more
29 than one-half of the days schools were maintained, he
30 shall compute for the district the product of 100
31 multiplied by the appropriate percentage specified in
32 Section 17301 multiplied by the appropriate relative
33 support factor specified in Section 47662 17662.5
34 multiplied by the statewide average current expense o f
35 education for elementary districts as determined
36 pursuant to subdivision (c) o f Section 17503.
37 (b) For each elementary district which exclusive of
38 pupils attending the seventh and eighth grades of a junior
39 high school has an average daily attendance of 101 or
40 more during the fiscal year, he shall compute the



— 25 — AB 1283

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8 
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20 
21 
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

allowance in accordance with subdivision (b) of Section 
17662, plus any amount pursuant to Sections 17654.5 and
17655.5.

Section 17656 of the Education Code is

Section 17660 of the Education Code is

Section 17662 of the Education Code is

Sec. 28. 
repealed.

Sec. 29. 
repealed.

Sec. 30. 
repealed.

Sec. 31. Section 17662 is added to the Education 
Code, to read:

17662. (a) The Superintendent of Public Instruction
shall allow to each school district on account of the 
average daily attendance credited to the district in the 
appropriate grade levels an amount computed in 
accordance with subdivision (b) of this section plus any 
amount pursuant to the provisions of Sections 17654.5,
17655.5, and 17664.

No apportionment may be less than one hundred 
twenty dollars ($120) per unit of average daily 
attendance.

(b) The apportionment to a school district equals shall 
be the product of (1) the number of units of average daily 
attendance of the district and, (2) the appropriate 
percentage specified in Section 17301 and, (3) the 
statewide average current expense of education for the 
type of district (elementary, high school, or unified) as 
defined in subdivision (c) of Section 17503 and (4) the 
relative support factor of the district, as determined 
pursuant to Section 17662.5.

Sec. 32. Section 17662.3 is added to the Education 
Code, to read:

17662.3. The relative wealth index of a school district 
is the quotient of the assessed valuation per unit of 
average daily attendance of the district, as adjusted 
pursuant to Chapter 1.7 of Division 14 (commencing with 
Section 17270), divided by the statewide assessed 
valuation per unit of average daily attendance for the 
particular type of school district.

SEC. 33. Section 17662.5 is added to the Education



AB 1283 — 26 —

1 Code, to read:
2 17662.5. The relative support factor of a school district
3 is computed in the following manner:
4 (a) For districts with a relative wealth index of 0.5 or
5 less, the relative support factor is 0.991 plus one-half
6 multiplied by the quantity 1.5 minus twice the relative
7 wealth index.
8 (b) For districts with a relative wealth index greater
9 than 0.5 but equal to or less than 1.5, the relative support

10 factor is 0.991 plus one-half multiplied by the quantity one
11 minus the relative wealth index.
12 (c) For districts with a relative wealth index greater
13 than 1.5, the relative support factor is the reciprocal of 0.9
14 divided by the relative wealth index.
15 Sec. 34. Section 17664 of the Education Code is
16 amended to read:
17 17664. For each district on account of each necessary
18 small high school the Superintendent of Public
19 Instruction shall make one of the following computations
20 selected with regard only to the number of certificated
21 employees employed or average daily attendance,
22 whichever provides the lesser amount:
23
24 Minimum number
25 Average daily of certificated Amount to be
26 attendance employees allowed
27  1 - 20 ....................................................  3 $8,500
28 2 1 - 40 ....................................................  4 16,980
29 41-  6 0 .......................................   5 25,470
30 61-  75 ....................................................  6 31,830
3 1 76 -  9 0 ....................................................  7 38,190
32 91-105       8 44,560
33 106-120    9 50,920
34 121-135      10 52,280
3 5  136 -1 50 ....................................      11 63,650
36 151-180    12 76,370
37 181-220   13 93,340
38 221-260     14 110,310
39 261-300   15 127,300



—  27 — AB 1283

1 For each district which has an average daily attendance
2 of less than 21 and for which fewer than three certificated
3 employees were employed, he shall_______ _ ($_______ )
4 allow four thousand dollars ($4,000) for each of the
5 teachers employed in the school.
6 For the purposes of this section a “ certificated
7 employee” is an equivalent full-time position of an
8 individual holding a credential authorizing service, and
9 performing service in grades 9 through 12 in any

10 secondary school. Any fraction of an equivalent full-time
11 position shall be deemed to be a full-time position.
12 The allowance established by this section for high
13 schools with an average daily attendance of less than 301
14 shall not apply to any high school established after July 1,
15 1961 unless the establishment of such schools has been
16 approved by the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
17 Sec. 35. Section 17665 of the Education Code is
18 amended to read:
19 17665. For each high school district which has an
20 average daily attendance of 301 or more during the fiscal
21 year, he shall compute the allowance in accordance with
22 subdivision (b) of Section 17662 plus any amount
23 pursuant to Section 17664.
24 Sec. 36. Section 17665.5 of the Education Code is
25 repealed.
26 Sec. 37. Article 2.1 (commencing with Section
27 17671) of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code
28 is repealed.
29 Sec. 38. Article 2.5 (commencing with Section
30 17680) of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code
31 is repealed.
32 Sec. 39. Article 3 (commencing with Section 17701)
33 of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code is
34 repealed.
35 SEC. 40. Article 3 (commencing with Section 17701)
36 is added to Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education
37 Code, to read:



AB 1283 — 28 —

1 Article 3. Adjustments to Expenditures
2
3 17701. fe  Adjustments to expenditures pursuant to
4 this article shall commence in the 1972-1973 fiscal year as
5 adjustments to the 1971-1972 current expense o f
6 education as defined in subdivision (c) o f Section 17503.
7 In the 1973-1974 fiscal year, and each fiscal year
8 thereafter, similar adjustments to expenditures shall be
9 made annually.

10 In computing the transfer to the State School Fund
11 pursuant to Section 17301 and the apportionments to
12 districts pursuant to Section 17662, the Superintendent of
13 Public Instruction shall annually adjust the amounts by a
14 factor which is a function of the adjustment in the
15 adjustment index developed pursuant to Section 17301 as
16 prescribed by this article.
17 For the purposes of this article, reference to
18 expenditures per unit of average daily attendance shall
19 have the same meaning as “current expense of
20 education” as used in subdivision jb j  (c) of Section 17503.
21 17702. For the purposes of this article the following
22 definitions shall apply:
23 (a) “Relative expenditure index” is the quotient of the
24 district’s expenditure per unit of average daily
25 attendance divided by the statewide average current
26 expense of education per unit of average daily
27 attendance for the particular type of district
28 (elementary, high school, or unified).
29 (b) “Relative salary index” is the quotient of the
30 district’s average salary for certificated or classified
31 employees by the statewide average salary for
32 certificated or classified employees.
33 Separate computations are to be made for each
34 category of employees.
35 (c) The “reasonable expenditure increment factor”
36 for a district which has a relative expenditure index
37 greater than one is the quotient of the change in the
38 adjustment index developed pursuant to Section 17301
39 divided by the square of the relative expenditure index.
40 The “reasonable expenditure increment factor” for a



— 29 — AB 1283

1 district which has a relative expenditure index equal to or
2 less than one is the product of the adjustment index
3 developed pursuant to Section 17301 multiplied by the
4 quantity three minus twice the relative expenditure
5 index.
6 17703. Annual salary increases for the employees of a
7 district which has relative salary index greater than one
8 may not exceed the amount determined by the
9 application of a factor which is the quotient of a salary

10 index developed by the Superintendent of Public
11 Instruction, the Legislative Analyst, and the Department
12 of Finance divided by the square of the relative salary
13 index.
14 17704. Annual salary increases for the employees of a
15 district which has a relative salary index equal to or less
16 than one may not exceed the amount determined by the
17 application of a factor which is the product of the index
18 developed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction,
19 the Legislative Analyst, and the Department of Finance
20 multiplied by the quantity three minus twice the relative
21 salary index.
22 17705. With respect to increases in salaries of
23 certificated employees the Superintendent of Public
24 Instruction shall disregard any increases granted on
25 account of additional academic training or promotion to
26 a different job category.
27 17706, The expenditures per unit of average daily
28 attendance in any school district may not increase by a
29 factor greater than the reasonable expenditure
30 increment factor unless such expenditures have been
31 approved by the electorate pursuant to Section 20803. In
32 the event a district exceeds such expenditure guidelines
33 the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall disregard
34 such excess expenditures when computing the average
35 current expense of education pursuant to subdivision (c)
36 of Section 17503.
37 17707. In the event a district exceeds the increases
38 authorized by Sections 17703, 17704, and 17705 regarding
39 salary increases the Superintendent of Public Instruction
40 shall withhold from apportionments any amount in



AB 1283 38 —

1 excess of such computations. When computing the
2 statewide average current expense of education pursuant
3 to subdivision (c) o f Section 17503 he shall also omit any
4 amounts attributable to excessive increases in salaries.
5 17708. Apportionments from the State School Fund
6 shall be adjusted to reflect the application of the
7 reasonable expenditure index to the apportionment for
8 each school district.
9 Se c . 41. Article 4 (commencing with Section 17751)

10 of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code is
11 repealed.
12 Se c . 42. Article 5 (commencing with Section 17801)
13 of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code is
14 repealed.
15 Sec. 43. Article 7 (commencing with Section 17901)
16 of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code is
17 repealed.
18 SEC. 44. Article 7.1 (commencing with Section 17920
19 of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code is
20 repealed.
21 Sec. 44.5. Article 7.2 (commencing with Section
22 17940) of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code
23 is repealed.
24 Sec. 45. Article 8 (commencing with Section 17951)
25 of Chapter 3 of Division 14 of the Education Code is
26 repealed.
27 Sec. 46. Section 18102 of the Education Code is
28 repealed.
29 Sec. 47. Section 18102 is added to the Education
30 Code, to read:
31 18102. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall
32 allow to each school district and county superintendent
33 of schools for each particular category of minors in a
34 special education program during the current fiscal year
35 an amount computed as follows:
36 (a) He shall divide the average daily attendance n
37 each particular category of minors in a special education
38 program by the maximum class size established by law for
39 special day classes for each particular category of minor
40 in a special education program, and increasing the



— 31 — AB 1283

quotient to the next highest integer where a fractional 
amount is produced.

(b) He shall then determine for each particular 
category the product of the amount computed under 
subdivision (a) multiplied by the maximum class size 
established by law for special day classes for the particular 
category.

(c) He shall then multiply the amount computed 
under subdivision (b) by the following amount for the

10 particular grade level and category:
11
12 Elementary school High school
13 Category grades (K-8) grades (9-12)
14 Physically handicapped
15 Class-size maximum of 3 ..... ...$5,400
16 Class-size maximum of 5 ........... $2,965
17 Class-size maximum of 6 ........ ... 2,520 ___
18 Class-size maximum of 8 ....... ... 1,800 1,670
19 Class-size maximum of 10.... . ... 1,370 1,240
20 Class-size maximum of 12....... ... 1,080 950
21 Class-size maximum of 16....... 590
22 Class-size maximum of 20..... 375
23 Mentally retarded (as defined
24 in Section 6902)
25 Class-size maximum of 15 ........ ..... 570 440
26 Class-size maximum of 18....... ... 420 285
27 Mentally retarded (as
28 defined in Section 6903) ...... ..... 920 785
29 Educationally handicapped........ .. ..... 1,000 870
30
31 Sec. 48. Section 18102.2 of the Education Code is
32 repealed.
33 Sec. 49. Section 18102,4 of the Education Code is
34 repealed.
35 Sec. 50. Section 18102.6 of the Education Code is
36 repealed.
37 Sec. 51. Section 18102.8 of the Education Code is
38 amended to read:
39 18102.8. The governing board of a school district with
40 an average daily attendance of less than 2,000 pupils



AB 1283 —  32 —

1 during the current fiscal year, or a county superintendent
2 of schools, may apply to the Superintendent of Public
3 Instruction whenever sparsity of population or
4 transportation distances make it impossible to maintain
5 classes of the maximum size as prescribed by this code or
6 by the State Board of Education. If the Superintendent of
7 Public Instruction, upon review, finds that it is impossible
8 to maintain classes of the maximum size as prescribed by
9 this code or by the State Board of Education, he may add

10 to the amounts allowed under Section 18102 an amount
11 sufficient to provide for the needed classes, but not more
12 per special class than the applicable amounts computed
13 in that section.
14 S e c . 52. Section 18102.9 of the Education Code is
15 amended to read:
16 18102.9. (1) In addition to the allowances provided
17 under Section 18102, the Superintendent of Public
18 Instruction shall allow to school districts and county
19 superintendents of schools for each unit of average daily
20 attendance for an amount as follows:
21 (a) For instruction of educationally handicapped
22 minors in learning disability groups, two thousand few
23 hundred eighty debars -($2,480) one thousand eight
24 hundred eighty dollars ($1,880) .
25 (b) For instruction of educationally handicapped
26 minors in homes or in hospitals, one thousand three
27 hundred dollars ($1,300).
28 (c) For instruction of physically handicapped minors
29 in remedial physical education, nine hundred fifty debars
30 ($950) seven hundred seventy-five dollars ($775) .
31 (d) For remedial instruction of physically
32 handicapped minors in other than physical education,
33 twe thousand seven hundred forty dollars ($2,740). two
34 thousand dollars ($2,000).
35 (e) For instruction of blind pupils when a reader has
36 actually been provided to assist the pupil with his studies,
37 or for individual instruction in mobility provided blind
38 pupils under regulations prescribed by the State Board of
39 Education, or when braille books are purchased, ink print
40 materials are transcribed into braille, or sound recordings



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

— 33 — AB 1283

and other special supplies and equipment are purchased 
for blind pupils, or for individual supplemental 
instruction in vocational arts, business arts, or 
homemaking for blind pupils, nine hundred ten dollars 
($910).

Braille books purchased, braille materials transcribed 
from ink print, sound recordings purchased or made, and 
special supplies and equipment purchased for blind 
pupils for which state or federal funds were allowed are 
property of the state and shall be available for use by 
blind pupils throughout the state as the State Board of 
Education shall provide.

(f) For other individual instruction of physically 
handicapped minors, one thousand three hundred dollars 
($1,300).

'(g) For the instruction of physically handicapped 
minors in regular day classes, ene thousand ©ne hundred 
dollars one thousand eighteen dollars ($1,018) .

(2) (a) The allowances provided under Section 18102 
may be increased proportionately on account of special 
day classes convened, or other instruction provided a 
pupil, for days in a school year which are in excess of the 
number of days in the school year on which the regular 
day schools of a district are convened.

(b) The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall 
compute for each applicant school district and county 
superintendent of schools in providing in such year a 
program of specialized consultation to teachers, 
counselors and supervisors for educationally 
handicapped minors, an amount equal to the product of 
ten dollars ($10) and the average daily attendance of 
pupils enrolled in special day classes, learning disability 
groups, and home and hospital instruction for 
educationally handicapped minors.

Sec. 53. Section 18102.10 of the Education Code is 
amended to read:

18102.10. For each special class or program for which 
a state allowance is provided under this article or under 
Section 18060 or 18062, each school district and each 
county superintendent of schools maintaining such



AB 1283 — 34 —

1 special classes or programs shall report annually to the
2 Superintendent of Public Instruction, on forms he shall
3 provide, all expenditures and income related to each
4 special class or program.
5 If the Superintendent of Public Instruction determines
6 that the current expense of operating a special class or
7 program as defined in the California School Accounting
8 Manual does not equal or exceed the sum of the basic
9 program support determined pursuant to Section 17662

10 and the allowance provided under this article for each
11 pupil in average daily attendance in the special class or
12 program maintained by a school district for each pupil in
13 average daily attendance in special classes or programs
14 maintained by the county superintendent of schools, then
15 the amount of such deficiency shall be withheld from
16 state apportionments to the school district or the county
17 superintendent of schools, as the case may be, in the
18 succeeding fiscal year in accordance with the procedure
19 prescribed in Section 17414.
20 Expenditures for equipment that the Superintendent
21 of Public Instruction determines are necessary for
22 instruction in a special class or program for physically
23 handicapped minors shall be considered as current
24 expense for purposes of this section. In any year the
25 district’s allowable expenditure for such equipment may
26 not exceed 1 percent of the current expense of operating
27 the district’s physically handicapped program.
28 SEC. 54. Section 18355 of the Education Code is
29 amended to read:
30 18355. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall
31 allow, in addition to all other allowances, to the county
32 school service funds: (a) for all emergency schools
33 maintained in each elementary school district of the
34 county by the county superintendent of schools, (b) all
35 special schools or classes for mentally retarded minors
36 and severely mentally retarded minors maintained in
37 each elementary school district of the county by the
38 county superintendent of schools, (c) each elementary
39 school maintained in juvenile halls, juvenile homes, and
40 juvenile camps, by the county superintendent of schools,



— 35 — AB 1283

1 and all opportunity schools and classes maintained by the
2 county superintendent of schools pursuant to Sections
3 6502 and 6503, and (d) all schools and classes for
4 educationally handicapped minors maintained in each
5 elementary school district of the county by the county
6 superintendent of schools, the same amount per
7 elementary pupil as he would allow under Section 17662.
8 No allowance shall be made for emergency schools
9 which is in excess of the actual expense of maintaining the

10 emergency school.
11 Sec. 55. Section 18358 of the Education Code is
12 amended to read:
13 18358. For all physically handicapped pupils,
14 mentally retarded minors and educationally
15 handicapped minors of secondary grade, and
16 handicapped adults, educated by the county
17 superintendent of schools and for all secondary schools
18 maintained in juvenile halls, juvenile homes and juvenile
19 camps by the county superintendent of schools, the
20 Superintendent of Public Instruction shall allow the same
21 amount per high school pupil as he would allow under
22 Section 17662.
23 However, with respect to handicapped adults, the
24 following limits shall apply:
25 (a) The total of allowances for education of
26 handicapped adults in classes established by the county
27 superintendent of schools pursuant to Section 5746 shall
28 not exceed fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) in any one
29 fiscal year. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall
30 establish a system of priorities that he shall by rule or
31 regulation adopt which shall give highest priority to those
32 counties in which no or an insufficient program for the
33 education of handicapped adults is provided by the
34 school districts within the county, in order to comply with
35 the limitation prescribed by this subdivision.
36 (b) The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall
37 allow for handicapped adults the amount specified in
38 Section 17951 for each unit of average daily attendance
39 for adults for high school districts.
40 Sec. 56. Section 18401 of the Education Code is



AB 1283 — 36 —

1 amended to read:
2 18401. The Superintendent of Public Instruction shall
3 allow to each county school tuition fund one hundred
4 twenty dollars ($120) for each unit of average daily
5 attendance of pupils residing in the county and attending
6 school in an adjoining state during the fiscal year. Such
7 average daily attendance shall not be included in the
8 computations provided for in Section 17702.
9 SEC. 57. Section 20404 of the Education Code is

10 amended to read:
11 20404. On or before August 15, the county board of
12 education shall file with the board of supervisors a
13 certified statement showing the amount of money to be
14 raised by a county tax for purposes of this chapter. The
15 board of supervisors shall fix a rate for the county tax
16 sufficient to produce the amount specified in the
17 statement and shall, at the time of levying other county
18 taxes, levy the tax so fixed.
19 The proceeds of the tax levied pursuant to this section
20 shall be credited to the single county school service fund
21 of the county and any expenses of the county
22 superintendent of schools, the county board of education,
23 and the county committee on school district organization
24 required by Section 881 or any other sections of this code
25 required to be paid from the county general fund shall
26 not be paid from such fund but shall be paid from the
27 money in the single county school service fund.
28 A tax levied pursuant to this section shall not exceed
29 the rate of ten cents ($0.10) per one hundred dollars
30 ($100) of assessed valuation for administrative and
31 business functions.
32 Sec. 58. Section 20751 of the Education Code is
33 repealed.
34 Sec. 59. Section 20751 is added to the Education
35 Code, to read:
36 20751. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature that
37 statutory maximum -tax rates be sufficient te permit an
38 average wealth seheel district te provide an average

40 with state allowances and apperMenmentsy



— 37 — AB 1283

-(b)- 33*e m axim u m  lax rate p er each o n e  hun dr ed  
dollars -($100 )■ o f assessed valu ation fo r an  elem en tary ;

; aja 0.13 e e - f  4 /mitI-K »,■»-* 1-1-̂.. la Eft? aTTT Tf̂ TTTl TXT Titt?
4 following table;

6 Li** n fin 1 V' **•ntstonr Tnc?ttT E lem ent High School Unified
7 3072/1978t........ $3410 $430 $3t30
8 4973/4074—— 475 3t30 QQK
9 l£gX /4.Q7ST75T7KT“T£7TT?’ ’

10
11 following....... 1 gfjX;T7t7 itTXTXj or.gn
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20 
21 
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

-(e)- 34m maximum lax rale for a community eohegc 

purposes; and ten eents -f$QrlO)- for adult education 

vaf-uahem
-(d)- 3%e maximum lax rales set forth m this seetien 

may he exceeded with the approval of a majority of the 
electorate pursuant to Section 20893t

fiscal year exceeds seven hundred twcnty/five dollars 
■(■$725) for elementary districts or exceeds nine hundred 
twelve dollars -($012(  for high school districts, sueh 
expenditures may not he increased except hy election of 
the voters of the district:

-(f)- Ifi during 3073/ 74; and in subsequent fiscal years, 
the authorized expenditure level exceeds the statewide

daily attendance for the elementary distric ts and 343 
percent of the statewide average current expense for 
high school districts; sueh expenditures may not he 
increased except hy election of the voters of the district. 
expenditure controls applied pursuant to Article 3 
(commencing with Section 17701) o f Chapter 3 o f 
Division 14 replace statutory school district tax rate 
limitations for elementary, high school, and unified 
districts.

No district may exceed the authorized expenditure 
level determined pursuant to Article 3 (commencing



AB 1283 — 38 —

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8 
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20 
21 
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

with Section 17701) o f Chapter 3 o f Division 14 unless 
such excess expenditures have been approved by the 
electorate pursuant to Section 20803.

For community college districts the maximum tax rate 
shall be thirty-five cents ($0.35) for community college 
purposes, and ten cents ($0.10) for adult education 
purposes, on each one.hundred dollars ($100) o f assessed 
valuation.

Section 20800 of the EducationSe c . 60. 
repealed.

Se c . 61. 
repealed.

Se c . 62. 
repealed. 

Se c . 63.

Code is

Section 20801.5 of the Education Code is 

Section 20802.8 of the Education Code is

Code isSection 20806 of the Education 
amended to read:

20806. For the purpose of providing funds for the 
payment by the district of all or part of the premiums, 
dues, or other charges for health and welfare benefits on 
active officers and employees and retired officers and 
employees who at the time of retirement were enrolled 
in a health and welfare benefit plan, or on the spouses and 
dependent children of such active and retired officers 
and employees, or on both such active and retired officers 
and employees and their spouses and dependent 
children, which the governing board of a district may 
have authorized in accordance with the provisions of 
Article 1 (commencing with Section 53200) of Chapter 2 
of Part 1 of Division 2 of Title 5 of the Government Code 
and for the expenses incurred by the district in 
administration of a program involving the payment of 
such health and welfare benefits, district taxes, up to a 
maximum of five cents ($0.05) per one hundred dollars 
($100) of assessed valuation, may be levied and collected 
annually by the respective district at the same time and 
in the same manner as other district taxes are levied and 
collected. The tax shall be in addition to any other district 
tax now or hereafter authorized by law, and shall not be 
considered in fixing maximum rates of tax for school 
district purposes. Moneys collected pursuant to this



— 39 — AB 1283

is

1 section may also be expended for the requirements of
2 Section 13658.
3 The provisions of this section authorizing the payment
4 of all or part of the premiums, dues, or other charges for
5 health and welfare benefits for the retired officers and
6 employees who at the time of retirement were enrolled
7  in a health and welfare benefit plan, shall be limited in
8 applicability to any school district, or of two or more
9  school districts governed by governing boards of identical

10 personnel, having an average daily attendance of 400,000
11 or more as shown by the annual report of the county
12 superintendent of schools for the preceding year.
13 Se c . 64. Section 20807 of the Education Code
14 repealed.
1 5  S e c . 6 5 .

16 repealed.
1 7  S e c . 6 6 .

18 repealed.
1 9  S e c . 6 7 .

20 repealed.
21 Sfife 6&  S eetio m  Z-, % S-, h  IQ, Ur, m , &r, m , &■,
22 6% and 67 ef this aet shall become operative Of* J[uly
23 -b 4674? From Jtdy h  4972; until July h  4974; the taxes for
24 speeial purposes actually levied in all school districts

26 aet shah be redueed by an amount which will limit the
27 revenues of eaeh distriet to not more than will provide
28 the prior year’s expenditure level plus the application of
2 9  t h e  reasonable e x p e n d i t u r e  i n c r e m e n t  f a e t o r  p u r s u a n t  t o

30 Article 3 -feommcneing with Section 47794)- of Chapter 3
« 4 I A *  \ JLJ& iCXt~ -jh-KVXV o  4-qL.f-vytL A l l  m  s ntn t/-in n h  11v laivii urs. v7X XXTv_7 XjOlXCxrCivTIT V-iv/uv--. x m tTttvTii TtTTCTcr oxsctix
32 be redueed proportionately unless the county
33 superintendent of schools approves an alternate method
34 of reduction.

Section 20808 of the Education Code is 

Section 20808.5 of the Education Code is 

Section 20816 of the Education Code is

O



APPENDIX “ C”
AMENDED IN SENATE JUNE 20, 1972 
AMENDED IN SENATE MAY 23, 1972

SENATE BILL No. 1302

Introduced by Senators Dymally, Alquist, Grunsky, and 
Rodda Rod da, Be hr, and Moscone 

(Coauthors: Assemblymen Arnett, Cory, Dunlap, Bill 
Greene, and Lewis Lewis, Fong, and MacDonald)

March 15, 1972

An act to add Chapter 6d ■(commencing with Section §445f 
to Division dAMEND SECTION 16601.5 of, to add Sections 
16602.5 and 16602.6 to, and to amend Section 16601.5 TO 
ADD CHAPTER 6.1 (COMMENCING WITH SECTION 
6445) TO DIVISION 6 OF, AND TO ADD ARTICLE 1.5 
(COMMENCING WITH SECTION 16820) TO CHAPTER 
1 OF DIVISION 13 of, the Education Code, AND to amend 
the heading o f Chapter 2.5 (commencing with Section 
16150) o f Part 4 o f Division 9 of, to amend Section 16150 of, 
and to add Sections 16151.5 and 16153.5 to, the Welfare and 
Institutions Code, relating to early childhood education, 
and making and appropriation therefor.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
SB 1302, as amended, Dymally. Education Early childhood 

education.
State s legislative intent re establishment of statewide 

program for early childhood education.
Defines mdueatienal program for early childhood 

education  ̂as the entire sehool/sponsorcd offering for pupils, 
other than exceptional ehddretg in early primary classes, 
kindergarten; and grades 4 through 3? including in/ekss and 
out/of/elass aetfoitiesr

Requires State Board o f Education to establish 
comprehensive program for early childhood education at



SB 1302 2

specified levels.
A uthorizes governing boards o f school districts maintaining 

specified grade levels to develop master plans for early 
childhood level in the 1972-73 fiscal year.

fErmits; beginning with 4-97&/1973 school year; and 
requires beginning with 1976/1077 sebooi year; eaeh school 
district maintaining kindergarten and specified elementary

master plan for early ebddbood edeeafienr
Requires such school districts to develop and submit master 

plans by 1976-77 school year.
Authorizes governing boards to develop and submit joint 

master plans to Department o f Education.
Specifies criteria to be contained in master plan-
Requires master plans to incude comprehensive statement 

setting forth district’s educational program.
Specifies factors to be considered by State Beard of 

Education in establishing preferences and priorities among 
school districts for purpose of apportioning state funds 
appropriated for implementation of early ehrfdheed 
education programs.

Requires State Board o f Education to establish standards 
and criteria in evaluating district plans which shall include 
specified standards and criteria and specifies that the State 
Board o f Education shall approve a plan which provides for 
initiation o f classes for pupils who have attained the age o f 3 
years and 9 months unless such provisions contain a 
restructuring o f kindergarten and grades one through three.

Authorizes State Board of Education to condition future 
allowances on a priority basis and apportioning allowances 
thereby, and authorizes scheduled increases thereof on school 
district’s meeting objectives contained in master plan.

Authorizes State Board of Education to establish 
performance objectives in reading and mathematics for 
pupils participating in early childhood education programs.

Requires State Board o f Education to adopt reading and 
mathematics objectives by 1975-76school year, and allows the 
board to take all actions necessary to reach objectives.

Establishes schedule of allowances to school districts for 
purposes of early ehifdhood educational programs; including



— 3 — SB 1302

additional allowances for pupils with special educational 
needs.-

Provides for allowances to districts with approved master 
plans in three specified classes.

Provides for additional allowances to pupils having 
demonstrable educational needs in three specified classes.

Authorizes Superintendent o f Public Instruction to reduce 
district apportionmen ts in accordance with amounts received  
pursuant to allowances for specialist teachers.

Requires Superintendent o f Public Instruction to apportion 
funds.

Prescribes child enrollment procedure for early primary 
class, minimum school day, and computation o f average daily 
attendance.

Specifies age for admission to an early childhood education 
program as 3 years and 9 months.

Specifies minimum schoolday for pupils in early childhood 
education classes as 180 minutes, including recesses.

Appropriates fends for fiscal years 1973/1974 through 
1977/ 10787 for purposes of early ehildhood education 
programs. Requires that of funds so appropriated, se much 
thereof as is needed shall fee used to mated federal funds to

seeial services: Authorises Department of Education t© 
allocate funds appropriated for specified compensatory

group ehild ear©; and early ehiftiheod educational programs:
Declares legislative purpose in having program o f 

transportation o f pupils attending early primary classes and 
permits the governing board o f any school district to transport 
pupils or parents attending such classes maintained for pupils 
who have attained the age o f 3 years and 9 months.

Appropriates funds, in varying amounts, to the 
Superintendent o f Public Instruction for providing state 
reimbursements for such transporta tion for each o f the fiscal 
years from 1973-74 through 1977-78, inclusive.

Includes group child care and early childhood education 
programs within scope of various existing provisions relating 
to preschool, children’s center, and day care programs, and 
excludes day care programs from such provisions.



SB 1302 — 4 —

Requires Department of Social Welfare to contract with 
Department of Education to provide system of prescribed 
social services for children and families of children enrolled 
in an early childhood education program. Prohibits making of 
any per capita reimbursements under such social Services on 
account of any school district not meeting prescribed 
standards for educational component of a program.

Makes appropriations o f specified amounts from the 
General Fund to the Department o f Education for purposes 
o f specified early childhood education programs for 
1973-1974, 1974-1975, 1975-1976, 1976-1977, and 1977-1978 
fiscal years.

Makes provision re use of certain other funds for purposes 
of early childhood education programs contingent upon 
enactment of unspecified Assembly Bill AB 1283.

Vote—Majority; Appropriation—Yes;
Fiscal Committee-—Yes.

The people o f the State o f California do enact as follows:

1 S e c t i o n  1. Chapter 6.1 (commencing with Section
2 6 4 4 5 )  is added to Division 6  of the Education Code, to
3 read:
4
5  C h a p t e r  6 .1 .  E a r l y  C h i l d h o o d  E d u c a t i o n

6
7 6445r T h e  feegtshttef c  h ereb y finds and declares that
8 6445. For the purposes o f this chapter, “early
9 childhood education programs” are defined as all

10 educational programs, except those for exceptional
11 children as defined in Section 6870, offered in the public
12 school system, including in-class and out-of-class
13 activities, for children age 3years and 9months, to 8years
1 4  under a local school-by-school comprehensive master
15 plan approved by the State Board o f Education which is
16 designed to assure:
1 7  (a) A comprehensive restructuring o f primary
1 8  education in California kindergarten through third grade
19 to m ore fully m eet the unique needs, talents, interests
20 and abilities o f each child.



— 5 — SB 1302

1 (b) That early educational opportunities are made
2 a vailable to children who are 3 years and 9 months o f age
3 to take advantage o f the capacity for learning o f children
4 at this age level.
5 (c) The cooperation and participation o f parents in
6 the educational program to the end that the total
7 community is involved in the developm ent o f the
8 program.
9 (d) The pupils participating will develop an increased

10 com petency in the skills necessary to the successful
11 achievement in later school subjects such as reading,
12 language, and mathematics.
13 (e) Maximize the use o f existing state and federal
14 funds in the implementation o f early childhood
15 education programs.
16 6445.1. The Legislature hereby finds and declares
17 that a comprehensive program o f early childhood
18 education is needed to restructure public education in
19 California. The Legislature, therefore, declares its intent
20 to require that the State Board o f Education develop a
21 comprehensive program for children ages 3 years and 9
22 months, to 8 years. The objectives o f this plan will include
23 assurance that each child will have an individualized
24 program to perm it the developm ent o f his maximum
25 potential and that all pupils who have com pleted the
26 third grade o f the state’s educational system will have
27 achieved a level o f com petence in the basic skills o f
28 reading, language, and mathematics sufficient to
29 continued success in their educational experiences. The
30 system will be based on the development o f a local
31 school-by-school master plan for early childhood
32 education which shall include a phase-in program based
33 on an increase in the number o f schools in the state
34 participating each year until maximum participation is
35 achieved.
36 a comprehensive and coordinated program of early >
37 efeddfeood education developed fey the State Board of
38 fidoeatfon is needed to improve and restructure public
39 education in California. The Legislature declares its
40 intent te require that the State Board of Education



SB 1302 —  6 —

includes fttt 
er elasses Ik*

1 establish « comprehensive program for *-ar!y childhood 
9 education for ehtk en in early primary-, kindergarten? 
o ft id <*radob- 1 through 3? through a t.-otem for -the
4 development of a local master plan fot early ehddheod
5 ee need- - n Snob 'lystona shad include a phaaod/in pfograre
6 ha* ed ,n » f t r  crease in the s tm y ’ ef schools fo the state
7 p _ -pating each year until mufoesum participation is 
b aefoeved? the eoordinatfon of all avadahle state and 
9 fidera.' funding sources? mafomfoing available federal

-0 fond, nd the elements specified in Seetfon 6445t4t
11 6445-d-r As used in this eheptert
12 -(a)- -•■Early
13 educational programs,

15 early primary classes-, kindergartens? and grades 1 to 3?
16 inclusive, er in any one or more sueh classes or grades.
17 -(h)- “Educational program for early ehildhood
18 education” means the entire school/sponsorcd offering
19 for pupils, exeept for exceptional children defined in
20 Seetfon 6870? in early primary classes? kindergartens, and 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

22 activities.
23 -(e)- “Early primary graded er -early primary class”
24 means a elass established pursuant to Education Code
25 Section 6446r
26 -(d)- D̂epartment” means the Department of
27 Edueafiom
28 6445.2. Beginning with the 1972-1973 school year?
29 fiscal year each school district maintaining kindergarten,
30 and grades 1 to 3, inclusive, or any one or more such class
31 or grade, may develop and submit to the department
32 Department o f Education for approval a master plan for
33 early childhood education. Each such school district shall
34 submit to the Department o f Education for approval a
35 master plan for early childhood education to the
36 department no later than the 1976-1977 school year.
37 Application shall be made in accordance with rules and
38 regulations adopted by the State Board of Education.
39 6445.3. The governing boards of two er mere any
40 school districts maintaining any such class or grade may,



—- 7 —- SB 1302

1 with the approval of the department Department o f
2 Education, develop and submit for approval a joint
3 master plan for early childhood education.
4 6445.4. A master plan for early childhood education
5 shall include a comprehensive statement setting forth the
6 district’s educational program for early childhood
7 education. The State Board of Education shall establish
8 standards and criteria to be used in the evaluation of
9 plans submitted by school districts. Such standards and

10 criteria for review  and approval o f plans by the State
11 Board o f Education shall include, but need not be limited
12 to ; criteria te insure that approved plans make provision
13 for:
14 (a) An assessment Assessment of educational needs of
15 the district.
16 (b) A program o f restructuring o f kindergarten
17 through third grade.
18 -(b)- (c) Opportunities for early primary education
19 provided by the district educational programs for pupils
20 three years and nine months o f age including children s
21 center, day care, preschool, and child care services.
22 -fej- (d) Defined and measurable program objectives.
23 -(d)- A earefaily articulated program from early
24 primary through grade 3r
25 (e) A local program designed to systematically phase
26 into the program all the schools o f the district in no more
27 than five years.
28 -(e)- (f) Coordination of all district resources with the
29 objectives of the local plan.
30 -(f)- (g) Emphasis on an individualized diagnostic
31 approach to instruction.
32 -(g)- Strong parental (h) Parental and community
33 involvement.
34 -(h)- (i) Staff development and inservice training.
35 ft)- (j) Transportation of pupils participating in the
36 program.
37 -(j)- (k) Evaluation of the program.
, xaJli /a . XafOu ,f> ,’ST> MOilf Tt~t fT |~* cif - ,r> y t .rn -a--* <-i »XXX txfT̂ TTTvTrx̂  TTrWiJtxTF TJltTXTa TvTT vXtST~Ij v.iJiivtnwvi
39 education the department shall give preference to these
40 districts which have the largest number ef pupils



SB 1302 — 8 —

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8 
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20 
21 
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

d eterm in ed  te  h a v e  special edu cation al n eed s an d  th e

edueatfonr T h e  State B eard  e f  E d u ca tion shad ad ep t 
reg ulations settin g  forth  criteria  fo r d e te rm in in g special 
educational ne e d s; takin g in te  c onsideration se ed  factors, 
am on g ethers^ as lew  fam ily  inc o m e  an d  lew  le v e l e f  
academ ic ach ievem cn tr

6445^7 T h e  State  B eard  e f  E du catio n  shall ad ep t 
setting  forth  priorities for allow an ces u n der

th e  b en efit e f  all p up ils e lig ib le  In a district a m in im u m  
o f 50 p ercen t e f  th e  a m eu n t allow ed  fe  th e  district in  any  
e n e  year shall h e  allocated fo r th e  ben efi t e f  p up ils w ith  
spe cial ed u cation al n e e d s as d e te rm in e d  p u rsuant te  
criteria establish ed  in  accordan ee w ith  S ection  644& fo
Such stan dards m ay  p rov id e  th at allow an ces te  a d istrict 
shad h e  p rovid ed  e n  a p h asc /m  basis rath er th an  te  aH 
pu pils e lig ib le  th erefor  u n d er Sectio ns 644fo8 an d  6 44 5fo

The State Board o f Education shall not approve a plan 
which provides for the initiation o f classes for pupils who 
have attained the age o f 3 years and 9 months unless it 
also contains provisions for restructuring kindergarten 
and grades 1 through 3.

6445.5. School districts with master plans for early 
childhood education approved pursuant to Section 6445.4 
shall be eligible for allowances authorized under Sections 
6445.12, 6445.13, and 16821. Such allowances shall be 
apportioned to the extent that funds are available on a 
priority basis in accordance with a schedule established 
by the State Board o f Education.

6445.6. In apportioning allowances in accordance 
with Section 6445.5 for early childhood education, the 
Department o f Education shall give highest priority to 
(1) those districts which have the largest number o f 
pupils determined to have educational need, and (2) 
those districts with the lowest measure o f assessed 
valuation per pupil and making the most significant 
property tax effort.

The State Board o f Education shall adopt regulations 
setting forth criteria for the determination o f educational



— 9 — SB 1302

1 need which shall be based on such factors as a low level
2 o f pupil achievem ent and a low level o f family income.
3 6445.7. Districts receiving allowances pursuant to this
4 chapter shall provide that a minimum o f50 percent o f the
5 amount allowed to the district in any one year shall be
6 designated for schools with the largest number o f pupils
7 with educational need identified pursuant to Section
8 6445.6 until such time as allowances are authorized for all
9 schools.

10 6445.8. The State Board of Education may further
11 provide that i f , upon its determination - that a district has
12 not met the objectives of its approved plan, allowances
13 shall not be increased in accordance with the phase-in
14 schedule of the district’s approved plan. The board may
15 provide that the failure ef a distrieh over a designated
16 period; te meet the objectives of ds approved plan shall
17 subject the district to a termination of allowances under
18 this chapter? shall provide for an annual review  o f the
19 success o f each local district in m eeting the objectives o f
20 its approved plan for early childhood education. The
21 board shall adopt rules and regulations governing the
22 termination o f allowances to districts which are
23 unsuccessful in m eeting the objectives o f their approved
24 plan.
25 644§~? 6445.9. The State Board of Education shall
26 adopt pupil performance objectives in reading and
27 mathematics for use in district early childhood education
28 programs not later than the 1975-1976 school year. The
29 board naay is authorized to take all actions necessary to
30 effect the development, testing, validation, adoption and
31 implementation of such objectives.
32 6445.10. (a) Each district with an approved master
33 plan shall submit to the Department o f Education a
34 report o f its early childhood education program. Such
35 report shall be submitted in a form and manner and at
36 such times, but not less than annually, as prescribed by
37 the State Board o f Education. The report shall include,
38 but not be limited to, factors relating to:
39 (1) Fiscal expenditures.
40 (2) D egree and success o f program implementation.



SB 1302 —  10 —

1 (3) Quantitative estimate o f pupil progress.
2 (b) The Department o f Education shall derive a
3 composite score for each school which shall be obtained
4 from each o f the three factors listed in paragraphs (1),
5 (2), and (3) o f subdivision (a). In determining such score,
6 the Department o f Education shall, for the first year o f
7 participation by the school, assign a weight o f 20percent
8 for factor (1), 70 percent for factor (2), 10 percent for
9 factor (3). For the second year o f participation by the

10 school, the factors shall be assigned a weight o f 10percent
11 for factor (1), 50 percent for factor (2), 40 percent for
12 factor (3). For the third and each subsequent year o f
13 participation, only factors (2) and (3) shall be considered
14 and shall receive equal weighting.
15 6445.11. The Department o f Education shall compute
16 an index o f student attainment for each participating
17 school, using factors which have been shown to be
18 predictive o f school success. The obtained score for each
19 school shall be weighted by the degree this score m eets
20 or exceeds the predicted school achievement level.
21 Obtained scores falling below the predicted level o f
22 attainment shall be treated as a zero score. The
23 Department o f Education shall inform each participating
24 district o f the relative performance o f their participa ting
25 schools. Such data shall regularly be analyzed and
26 evaluated and submitted to the Legislature in the form o f
27 an annual report not later than the fifth legislative day o f
28 each regular session o f the Legislature.
29 % 6445.12. From the funds appropriated therefor
30 by the Legislature to the department Department o f
31 Education for the purposes of this chapter, the
32 Superintendent of Public Instruction shall allow 4© eaeh
33 school district with an approved master ptep school
34 districts with approved master plans for the education of
35 children pursuant to such plan an amount equal 4e plans:
36 (a) Five hundred dollars ($500) per pupil in average
37 daily attendance in the district in each early primary elaas
38 class maintained for pupils who have attained the age o f
39 3 years and 9 m onths.
40 (b) One hundred thirty dollars ($130) per pupil in



— 11 — SB 1302

1 average daily attendance in the district in each
2 kindergarten class.
3 (c) One hundred thirty dollars ($130) per pupil in
4 average daily attendance in the district in grades 1 to 3,
5 inclusive.
6 §4410 6445.13. In addition to the allowances
7 provided for in Section §441b$ 6445.12, the
8 Superintendent of Public Instruction shad allow to each
9 school district having an approved master plan-, on

10 aeeount of pupils having demonstrated special
11 educational needs, as determined in accordance with
12 Section «44iMk an amount epnal tor shall provide grants
13 for pupils determined by him to have demonstrated
14 educational need, in accordance with Section 6445.6, as
15 follows:
16 (a) One hundred dollars ($100) per pupil in average
17 daily attendance in the district in each early primary elass
18 in each class for pupils who have attained the age o f 3
19 years and 9 m onths.
20 (b) Sixty-five dollars ($65) per pupil in average daily
21 attendance in the district in each kindergarten class.
22 (c) Sixty-five dollars ($65) per pupil in average daily
23 attendance m the district in grades 1 to 3, inclusive.
24 644540; Funds available for allowances by the
25 Superintendent of Public Instruction pursuant to Article
26 5 -(-commencing with Section 5789f of Chapter 5rS of
27 Division § of the Education Code to each school district
28 which is also eligible for allowances under this chapter
29 ft?© 1
30 under this chapter-;
31 6445.14. In computing allowances authorized
32 pursuant to Section 6445.12 the Superintendent o f Public
33 Instruction shall reduce such allowances by the amount
34 per pupil apportioned pursuant to Article 5
35 (commencing with Section 5789) o f Division 6.
36 644544 6445.15. Allowances under this chapter shall
37 be made by the Superintendent of Public Instruction
38 from funds appropriated therefor by the Legislature. The
39 allowances shall be made as early as practicable in the
40 fiscal year and upon order of the Superintendent of



SB 1302 — 12 —

1 Public Instruction the State Controller shall draw his
2 warrants upon the money appropriated, in favor of the
3 eligible districts in the amounts ordered.
4 6445.16. The Department o f Education shall
5 continuously monitor and review  to assure that all funds
6 appropriated to school districts under this chapter are
7 expended for the purposes intended.
8 6445.17. Allowances shall not be granted under this
9 chapter to a district unless the fiscal effort o f the district

10 with respect to early childhood education for any fiscal
11 year o f participa tion under this chapter was not less than
12 the fiscal effort for that purpose for the fiscal year
13 preceding the district’s participation under this chapter.
14 6445.18. Allowances shall not be granted to a district
15 unless the fiscal effort o f that district with respect to each
16 child participating in the early childhood education
17 program for any fiscal year o f participation under this
18 chapter is no less than the fiscal effort o f the district per
19 elementary child not participa ting in the early childhood
20 education program. The Department o f Education shall
21 annually review  individual district expenditures to assure
22 the comparability o f local support based on rules and
23 regulations adopted by the State Board o f Education
24 which take into account growth in district enrollment
25 and increases in district costs.
26 6445:12 6445.19. The State Board of Education shall
27 have the power to adopt and promulgate all rules and
28 regulations necessary to the effective administration of
29 this chapter, including, but not necessarily limited to,
30 those specifically required to be adopted by particular
31 provisions of this chapter.
32 644545 6445.20. The governing board of the school
33 district, in its application for approval of a master plan,
34 may request waiver of the provisions of any section or
35 sections of this code if such waiver is necessary to
36 establish and operate an early childhood education
37 program. The need for waiver shall be explained and
38 justified in the application. The Superintendent of Public
39 Instruction, with approval of the State Board of
40 Education, may grant, in whole, or in part, any such



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

13 SB 1302

request when, in the opinion o f the Superintendent o f 
Public Instruction, failure to grant such request would 
hinder the implementation and maintenance o f the 
district’s program .

6445.21. A school district in its application for 
approval o f a master plan for early childhood education 
may include children s center services as provded for in 
Section 16603.

6446. The governing board o f any school district 
which has had a master plan for early childhood 
education approved by the department Department o f 
Education shall establish and maintain sufficient number 
ef early primary classes such number o f classes for pupils 
who have attained the age o f 3years and 9 months, as are 
necessary to implement such approved master plan for 
children residing in ffie district wb© living in the district 
that are eligible for admission pursuant to Section 6446.1 
but are not eligible for admission pursuant to Section 5254 
and whose parents or guardians present them for 
admission.

6446.1. A child may be admitted to an early primary 
a class established pursuant to Section 6446 only in any 
term during the first school month of the term and only 
if he is then i f  he is of the age prescribed. For good cause 
the governing board of a school district may permit a 
child of the proper age to be admitted to the class after 
the first school month of the school term.

If there is but one term during the school year, the 
child shall be three years and nine months of age on or 
before September 1 of the current school year. If there 
are two terms maintained during the school year, the 
child shall be three years and nine months on or before 
September 1 of the current school year, t© before he may 
be admitted in the first term of the school year, or three 
years and nine months of age on or before February 1 of 
the current school year, te before he may be admitted in 
the second term in any school year.

As part o f a master plan approved under Section 6445.4 
school districts may authorize admission o f any child who 
is four years o f age regardless o f time o f admission in the



SB 1302 — 14 —

1 school year.
2 6446.2. The State Board of Education shall establish
3 minimum standards authorizing service of instructional
4 personnel in early primary classes classes established
5 pursuant to Section 6446.
6 6446.3. The minimum schoolday for pupils m early
7 primary classes classes established pursuant to Section
8 6446 is 180 minutes inclusive of recesses.
9 6446.4. The computation of average daily attendance

10 in early primary classes classes established pursuant to
11 Section 6446 for the purpose of determining allowances
12 under Sections 644o?8 and 64454) 6445.12 and 6445.13,
13 shall be as prescribed in Section 11301. Sections 10951 to
14 10955, inclusive, and Sections 11001, 11002, 11007 and
15 11301.6 shall apply to early primary classes .
16 6446.5. So much of the money aHeeated for
17 allowances pursuant to Section 644541 moneys
18 appropriated for allowances pursuant to Section 6445.12,
19 as is needed, shall be for the purpose of providing state
20 funds to match be matched with available federal funds
21 to slipport those pupils eligible under the Social Security
22 Act for public social services. Federal reimbursement
23 shall be obtained by the Department of Social Welfare for
24 services to children of those families, designated by the
25 State Department of Education, eligible for federal
26 financial participation under the Social Security Act. The
27 State Department of Social Welfare and the State
28 Department of Education shall enter into a contract
29 wherein the Department of Education agrees to provide
30 educational services for such pupils wherein the
31 Department of Social Welfare agrees to pay to the
32 Department of Education all costs of services to
33 participants.
34 6446r6? Nothing m this chapter shah he construed to
35 sanction; perpetuate, of promote the racial or ethnic
36 segregation of pupils «  the pubhe schools?
37 Se c . 2. Section 16601.5 of the Education Code is
38 amended to read:
39 16601.5. The facilities used for any children’s center
40 established pursuant to this chapter shall first be used for



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39

—  15 — SB 1302

children of families meeting the conditions of Section 
16603.1 and may then be made available for children 
eligible for any children’s center, preschool or group 
child care program, authorized by the laws of this state, 
and any early childhood education program conducted 
under Chapter 6.1 (commencing with Section 6445) of 
Division 6.

The Department of Education shall develop guidelines 
and procedures for allocating funds appropriated for 
compensatory preschool educational programs as 
defined in Section 16151 of the Welfare and Institutions 
Code to augment preschool, children’s center, and group 
child care programs, and early childhood education 
programs conducted under Chapter 6.1 (commencing 
with Section 6445) of Division 6. Any moneys 
appropriated for such purpose in any fiscal year which 
are not expended may be carried over into the next 
succeeding fiscal year, and shall be available for 
expenditure in such fiscal year in addition to those funds 
appropriated for such purpose for such year.

Se c . 3. Section 16602.5 is added to the Education 
Code, to read:

16602.5. A school district in its application for 
approval of a master plan for early childhood education 
pursuant to Chapter 6.1 (commencing with Section 6445) 
of Division 6 shall include children’s centers’ services as 
provided for in this chapter.

Se c . 4. Section 16602.6 is added to the Education 
Code, to read:

16602.6. The term “elementary school” contained in 
Section 425 of the United States Code (the National 
Defense Education Act of 1958, P.L, 85-864 as amended) 
shall include early primary, and preschool classes, 
including preschool classes in children’s centers, for the 
purpose of the cancellation provisions of the Loans to 
Students in Institutions of Higher Learning.

Sec. 5. Article 1.5 (commencing with Section 16820) 
is added to Chapter 1 o f Division 13 o f the Education 
Code, to read:



SB 1302 — 16 —

1
2
3

Article 1.5. Transportation for Early 
Primary Pupils

4 16820. The Legislature hereby declares that a
5 comprehensive program o f early childhood education is
6 necessary to improve and restructure public education in
7 California so as to provide each pupil with an opportunity
8 for the early developm ent o f primary skills. The program
9 shall include classes maintained for pupils, who have

10 attained the age o f 3 years and 9 months, as an integral
11 part o f early childhood education.
12 The Legislature further finds that the transportation o f
13 pupils in such classes to and from school is an essential
14 aspect o f such program and a necessary part o f any
15 educational program designed for such children.
16 16821. Notwithstanding any other provision o f law,
17 the governing board o f any school district may provide
18 for the transportation to and from school o f pupils who
19 have attained the age o f 3 years and 9 months and are
20 enrolled in classes established pursuant to Section 6446,
21 whenever in the judgm ent o f the board, such
22 transportation is advisable and good reasons exist
23 therefor. A governing board may allow for the
24 transporta tion ofparen ts o f pupils enrolled in such classes
25 for the purpose o f accompanying their children to and
26 from the attendance center offering such early primary
27 classes.
28 Children m eeting the eligible age requirement for
29 enrollment in such class who are attending a children s
30 center, child day care center, or preschool program
31 operated by a public or private agency are deem ed to be
32 enrolled in such class for the purpose o f this section.
33 Districts shall receive state reimbursements for the
34 transportation o f such pupils pursuant to Article 10
35 (commencing with Section 18051) o f Chapter 3 o f
36 Division 14 o f the Education Code.
37 SEC. 6. There is hereby appropriated from the
38 General Fund to the Super in tenden t o f Public
39 Instruction for the purpose o f providing state
40 reimbursement for the transporta tion o f pupils pursuant



— 17 — SB 1302

1 to Section 16821, amounts for transfer to augment
2 subdivision (b) o f Section 17303.5 o f the Education Code
3 and which shall be made available for expenditure as
4 follows:
5 (a) For the fiscal year 1973-74, eight hundred
6 sixty-nine thousand eight hundred fifty dollars
7 ($869,850).
8 (b) For the fiscal year 1974-75, two million
9 twenty-nine thousand six hundred fifty dollars

10 ($2,029,850).
11 (c) For the fiscal year 1975-76, three million one
12 hundred eighty-nine thousand four hundred fifty dollars
13 ($3,189,450).
14 (d) For the fiscal year 1976-77, four million three
15 hundred forty-nine thousand two hundred fifty dollars
16 ($4,349,250).
17 (e) For the fiscal year 1977-78, five million seven
18 hundred ninety-nine thousand dollars ($5,799,000).
19 Any moneys made a vailable for expenditure under this
20 section in any such fiscal year which are not expended
21 may be carried over into the next succeeding fiscal year,
22 and shall be available for expenditure in such fiscal year
23 in addition to those funds otherwise made available by
24 this section for such year.
25 &E€t 5 Se c . 7. The heading of Chapter 2.5
26 (commencing with Section 16150) of Part 4 of Division 9
27 of the Welfare and Institutions Code is amended to read:
28
29 Chapter 2.5. Preschool, Children’s Center,
30 Group Child Care, and Early Childhood
31 Education Programs
32
33 Se€t % Se c . 8 .  Section 16150 of the Welfare and
34 Institutions Code is amended to read:
35 16150. The Legislature finds and declares that
36 preschool programs with a strong educational
37 component are of great value to all children in preparing
38 them for success in school, and constitute an essential
39 component of public social services as defined in Section
40 16151. The Legislature further finds that such programs



SB 1302 —  18 —

1 are often not available to many children who, because of
2 the low income of their families, parents in training, or
3 minimal employment, are deprived of adequate care and
4 this valuable educational experience, Therefore, it is the
5 intention of the Legislature in enacting this chapter to
6 provide equal educational opportunity to children of
7 low-income or disadvantaged families through
8 appropriate arrangements for preschool, children’s
9 center, group child care, and early childhood education

10 programs of an educational value to be developed in
11 accordance with a contractual agreement between the
12 State Department of Heakh Social Welfare and the State
13 Department of Education. The Legislature believes that
14 the introduction of young children to an atmosphere of
15 learning will improve their performance and increase
16 their motivation and productivity when they enter
17 school. In order to achieve this end, all programs
18 established under this chapter shall be centered upon a
19 defined educational program developed, conducted, and
20 administered with the maximum feasible participation of
21 the families served by the program.
22 SBC. 7 SEC. 9. Section 16151.5 is added to the
23 Welfare and Institutions Code, to read:
24 16151.5. The State Department of Social Welfare shall
25 enter into a contract with the State Department of
26 Education to provide for a statewide system of social
27 services for children educated under an early childhood
28 education master plan pursuant to Chapter 6.1
29 (commencing with Section 6445) of Division 6 of the
30 Education Code, to be established by school districts for
31 children and families who meet the requirement for
32 services under Education Code Section 6446.5. Social
33 services shall include those provided for in Section 10053
34 and in Part 3 (commencing with Section 11000) of
35 Division 9 of this code and the federal Social Security Act
36 Amendments of 1967.
37 &EG-. 8 Sec. 10. Section 16153.5 is added to the
38 Welfare and Institutions Code, to read:
39 16153.5. Notwithstanding any other provision of this
40 code, the State Department of Social Welfare shall not



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

19 — SB 1302

provide any per capita reimbursement pursuant to 
Section 16151.5 on account of any local school district 
program established pursuant to this chapter which does 
not meet the educational standards established by the 
State Board of Education.

All programs established pursuant to this chapter shall 
meet the requirements of Section 107 of Public Law 
90-222 (Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1967).

The State Department of Social Welfare shall have only 
such functions, duties and responsibilities with respect to 
early childhood education programs conducted pursuant 
to Chapter 6.1 (commencing with Section 6445) of 
Division 6 of the Education Code as is required by law 
and federal regulations.

&EC-. 9 Sec. 11. There is hereby appropriated from 
the General Fund to the Superintendent ef Public 
Instruction Department o f Education for the purposes of 
Chapter 6.1 (commencing with Section 6445) of Division 
6 of the Education Code, the following amounts:

(a) For allowances under Section 6445r8 6445.12 
amounts which shall be made available for expenditure as 
follows:

(1) For the fiscal year 1973-1974, forty-four million 
five hundred forty-four thousand dollars ($44,544,000).

(2) For the fiscal year 1974-1975, one hundred three 
million nine hundred thirty-six thousand dollars 
($103,936,000).

(3) For the fiscal year 1975-1976, one hundred
sixty-three million three hundred twenty-eight thousand 
dollars ($163,328,000).

(4) For the fiscal year 1976-1977, two hundred
twenty-two million seven hundred twenty thousand 
dollars ($222,720,000).

(5) For the fiscal year 1977-1978, two hundred
ninety-six million nine hundred sixty thousand dollars
($296,960,000).

(b) For the purposes of subdivision (a) of Section 
644S-.-9 6445.13, amounts which shall be made available for 
expenditure as follows:

(1) For the 1973-1974 fiscal year, one million eight



SB 1302 - 2 0  —

1 hundred twenty-seven thousand seven hundred fifty
2 dollars ($1,827,750.
3 (2) For the 1974-1975 fiscal year, four million two
4 hundred sixty-four thousand seven hundred fifty dollars 

' 5 ($4,264,750).
6 (3) For the 1975-1976 fiscal year, six million seven
7 hundred one thousand seven hundred fifty dollars
8 ($6,701,750).
9 (4) For the 1976-1977 fiscal year, nine million one

10 hundred thirty-eight thousand seven hundred fifty
11 dollars ($9,138,750).
12 (5) For the 1977-1978 fiscal year, twelve million one
13 hundred eighty-five thousand dollars ($12,185,000).
14 (c) For the purposes of subdivisions (b) and (c) of
15 Section 64454) 6445.13, amounts which shall be made
16 available for expenditure as follows:
17 (1) For the 1973-1974 fiscal year, six million five
18 hundred sixty-six thousand five hundred thirty-seven
19 dollars ($6,566,537).
20 (2) For the 1974-1975 fiscal year, fifteen million three
21 hundred twenty-one thousand nine hundred twenty
22 dollars ($15,321,920).
23 (3) For" the 1975-1976 fiscal year, twenty-four million
24 seventy-seven thousand three hundred three dollars
25 ($24,077,303).
26 (4) For the 1976-1977 fiscal year, thirty-two million
27 eight hundred thirty-two thousand six hundred eighty-six
28 dollars ($32,832,686).
29 (5) For the 1977-1978 fiscal year, forty-three million
30 seven hundred seventy-six thousand nine hundred
31 fifteen dollars ($43,776,915).
32 (d) The sum of five hundred thousand dollars
33 ($500,000) for the administration by the State
34 Department of Education of the provisions of Chapter 6.1
35 (commencing with Section 6445) of Division 6 of ♦the
36 Education Code.
37 Any moneys made available for expenditure under this
38 section in any such fiscal year which are not expended
39 may be carried over into the next succeeding fiscal year,
40 and shall be available for expenditure in such fiscal year



—  21 — SB 1302

1 in addition to those funds otherwise made available by
2 this section for such year.
3 Sfier 40 Se c . 1 2 . A master plan for early childhood
4 education shall provide that to the extent feasible, funds
5 allocated to the district pursuant to Chapter 6.10
6 (commencing with Section 6499.230) of Division 6 of the
7 Education Code, as added by Assembly Bill No. /  /
8 1 2 8 3 , shall be for purposes of Chapter 6.1 (commencing
9 with Section 6445) of Division 6 of the Education Code.

10 This section shall become operative only if Chapter 6.10
11 (commencing with Section 6499.230) is added to Division
12 6 of the Education Code by Assembly Bill No. /  /  1283
13 of the 1972 Regular Session.

O



Service of the within and receipt o f a copy thereof

is hereby admitted this..,,...._............day o f July, A.D.,

1972.