In the recent Supreme Court case Board of Education of the City of New York v. Tom F., the court split a 4-4 decision in what could come to be a very important issue for taxpayers.
In the case, Tom Freston, a former Viacom executive, sued the New York City Board of Education for money to fund the education of his child at a private school. When Freston’s son Gilbert began kindergarten, he was designated as a student in need of special education services that the school system did not offer. Under the 1970 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the school system was required to fund Gilbert’s education at a private institution that could accommodate his needs. The school system conceded to the funding, and continued to do so until it started a program that would meet Gilbert’s needs. At this point, the school system decided to cut funding unless Gilbert attended public school; the system said that as long as it could meet Gilbert’s needs, it was not required to pay additional funds to send a student in its district to a private school. Freston sued, saying that special needs students should not have to suffer a “trial period” in the public school system before receiving funding for a private education (if the public education is unsatisfactory). The New York City Board of Education countered that the national average cost of private school per pupil was $25,440, five times that of the per pupil cost of public school. Further, the claims for special needs statuses are climbing, and public systems are worried that more and more parents will send their children to private school without trying public school services first.
The ruling in the lower court was in Freston’s favor, requiring the New York City Board of Education to continue to pay for Gilbert’s private education. New York City Board of Education appealed to the Supreme Court, but Justice Kennedy chose not to participate in the case, leaving the ruling at a split 4-4. This means that the ruling of the lower court will be upheld, but there is no national precedent either way for this case. Furthermore, because it was a split court, the Justices will not release their votes for the public to know who voted which way.
As a taxpayer, this ruling is very disturbing to me. Perhaps it is because I attended public school for 13 years, but the thought of paying for special education services at private tuition rates, when the public school already has those services is appalling. Our public schools are already under-funded and struggling to keep average students on track. Forcing them to pay five times the average cost for certain students seems ludicrous.
Now before I sound too harsh, let me say that I think that everyone deserves an education. And, if a public school system does not have a program to fit a student’s special, documented needs, then by all means the public school needs to fund private tuition. But here is a school system that set up an entire special education program for students with Gilbert’s needs, and the court held that this is still not enough. So, not only is the school system paying for Gilbert to go to private school, but the school system invested money in a program, educators, equipment, and curriculum for students like Gilbert. This suddenly adds up to be even more expensive than the $25, 440 per student. And with special needs claims on the rise, this seems to be a prime example of a slippery slope: once you let one student get away with it, our taxes will suddenly be used to fund hundreds.
Perhaps even more disturbing to me is that there is no good precedent to work from here. This case received a fair amount of press attention, and it will probably prompt another appeal eventually. But not only do we have a split court, we do not even know who voted which way, so it would be fruitless to make predictions about how a case like this could go in the future. All we can do is wait until the next case comes up and continue to pay in the meantime.
I hope the next time a case with this audacity makes it to the Supreme Court, the public will have made their position clear: as taxpayers, we fund the opportunity for children’s education. But we only fund one opportunity for children’s education, and if this opportunity is in the public school system, then students need to at least start there before going private. Using taxes to fund private education when public education possesses similar resources is only acceptable as a last resort.
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