My children were attending school in what was formerly the Richmond Unified School District in 1991 when the District ran out of money and closed six weeks before the normal end of the school term. With the help of a public interest law firm (Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights) and a sympathetic large private law firm (Morrison & Foerster), we joined a group of parents in suing the State of California. Not only did we win a temporary injunction that forced the State to provide funding to complete the school year, we also won a California Supreme Court decision that set a new legal standard for the State’s obligation for school funding. Because my name was the first in alphabetical order of the plaintiff parents’ names, the suit became known as “Butt v. State of California.”

The State argued in part that Serrano established the State’s responsibility to fairly apportion revenues at the beginning of each school year—not that the State could be constitutionally liable for the mismanagement of those funds by local officials. The 1992 Butt decision found that the "…State itself bears the ultimate authority and responsibility to ensure that its district-based system of common schools provides basic equality of educational opportunity" (Butt v. State of California, Dec. 1992), and resulted in the State’s paying for the district in question to complete its six weeks of instruction. By unequivocally establishing the State’s responsibility to provide education freely and equally without exception for any actions by local officials, this case eliminated the possibility of total local control. The Butt decision remains the high water mark in education litigation (just Google “Butt v. State of California”), but it has failed to eliminate inequities, such as the outstanding WCCUSD loan.

After establishing the State’s obligation to provide equitable education opportunity for all students, it is incomprehensible that WCCUSD students who were not even born in 1991 are still paying a usurious interest rate (not to mention the principal) for a debt that should have discharged by the State long ago. This legal requirement for educational equity continues to be ignored by California governor after governor. More and more school districts are, like Richmond in 1991, giving up “local” control to take State bailout loans. All are in communities challenged by low income and non-English speaking demographics. We have yet to see a school district in a wealthy community throw in the towel. Is that educational equity?

Perhaps help is on the way with a lawsuit filed in 2000, Williams v. State of California, which asserts that thousands of California students are "deprived of essential educational opportunities to learn" because their schools lack qualified teachers, instructional materials, and clean, safe facilities, and asks the courts to decide what kind of responsibility the state has to provide an adequate level of educational services.

The outstanding balance on the WCCUSD loan should not just be refinanced, it should be wiped out, and the State should be required to provide the District sufficient funds to operate libraries and provide sports and counselors just like the wealthy districts.