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more information about the Serrano v. Priest decisions and their effect
on California school finance: EdSource |
“We
had all the districts spending in a very narrow range. $100 adjusted for
cost, and so we really wrote off adequacy and we ended up with equalized
mediocrity.”
Michael Kirst, First to Worst
In two major decisions, Serrano I (1971) and Serrano II (1976),
the California state supreme court declared California's property-tax-based
school fiance system to be unconstitutional and a violation of equal protection
principals. The court found that poor communities had to have high tax rates
to generate relatively low per-pupil revenue, whereas wealthy communities
could have low tax rates and yet still generate relatively high per-pupil
revenue. In other words, a tax rate in 1976 of $1.00 per $100 in a poor
community like Baldwin Hill would generate $170 per child. In Beverly hills,
this same rate would generate $1,340 per child. In 1976, the court ordered
the state legislature to change the way that California schools were financed.
((Paradise
Lost, Peter Schrag)
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In response, the California legislature came up with a bill
(AB 65) designed to equalize school revenues by increasing state funds for
poor communities while putting a cap on per-pupil revenues in wealthy districts
and redistributing some of their local property taxes to poor districts.
This method of equalizing school funding proved to be successful and by
the late 1990s, per pupil revenue limits were within a $350 range for 97%
of the states’ students.
 “Like
many mass interventions, the Serrano decisions had unintended, negative
consequences greater than any gain ever pursued.”
John Mockler, First to Worst
According to
some experts, the Serrano decisions had two significantly negative consequences.
First, the Serrano decisions capped per-pupil revenues in high spending
districts in order to equalize school spending. However, the court had overlooked
the fact that 75% of poor children lived in high spending districts such
as San Francisco and Oakland. Thus the Serrano decisions actually led to
lower school spending for most poor children.
Secondly, the Serrano decisions may have made California tax payers less
willing to pay their property taxes. According to John Mockler, “the
public just said, “Well, gee, it doesn’t matter if we raise
more money in property taxes because it won’t go to our local schools,
so what do we care? After all, the logic goes, if increased property taxes
don't help our schools, why should we be for increased property taxes?”
Thus, in a somewhat roundabout way, the Serrano decisions may have contributed
to the California property tax revolt of 1978.
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