Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.The executive director of the Learning Community sees hope in Friday's Nebraska Supreme Court ruling upholding its common property tax levy, even as critics of the two-county education cooperative vow to keep up their fight.
Ted Stilwill said the ruling confirms the Learning Committee's belief that helping the Omaha metro area's most disadvantaged children is not the responsibility of just one school district.
People may have disagreed with how the common levy redistributes taxes, and they may hold hard feelings from conflicts that spawned the Learning Community, Stilwill said.
"But that principle, that the Supreme Court really affirmed, is that here's a local entity that's meant to get at those needs of disadvantaged kids, and now we can get about that business," he said.
The court, with no dissenting opinions, rejected the argument of the Sarpy County Farm Bureau and two landowners that the levy, which redistributes property taxes among 11 school districts, violates the Nebraska Constitution's prohibition on property taxes for a state purpose.
The levy is applied in the following districts: Omaha, Millard, Papillion-La Vista, Bellevue, Elkhorn, Westside, Gretna, Ralston, Bennington, Douglas County West and South Sarpy.
The court said the levy serves a primarily local purpose.
"The legislative history makes it clear that the Learning Community legislation was enacted to resolve specific, local problems and that the predominant purpose of the legislation was not to benefit the state as a whole," judges said.
The court also dismissed plaintiffs' arguments that the taxes were unconstitutional because they were not applied uniformly and represented an unconstitutional collection of tax revenue from one district for the benefit of another.
Greg Adams, chairman of the Legislature's Education Committee, said Friday he was confident, though "not absolutely," that the legislation he helped the late Education Committee Chairman Ron Raikes craft would pass constitutional muster.
"In this case, the Supreme Court has said, 'You did it right,'" Adams said.
Adams said he had hoped for a ruling early in the 60-day legislative session in case the common levy was struck down, and lawmakers needed to re-write the law. Instead, lawmakers can focus on the "potpourri" of other education bills dealing with everything from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools to creating career academies, he said.
Adams said he is open to legislative changes that would improve the Learning Community. In almost every session someone has proposed legislation to chip away at the education cooperative or to make technical changes, he said.
The ruling came as a victory for the Omaha and Bellevue school officials — and for the Learning Community Council — who fought in court to save the shared property tax system as crucial to their districts' long-term financial health.
The 36-page opinion disappointed some suburban school officials who hoped the court would strike a blow to the 11-district education cooperative created by lawmakers in 2007.
Lorraine Chang, chairwoman of the 21-member Learning Community Council, said the ruling removes an obstacle that had hung over the education cooperative.
"Now nothing is standing in our way to really do the hard work of working together in collaboration with one another. It's not a question of whether we should do that, I think it's now how can we move forward together."
Freddie Gray, president of the Omaha school board, said Omaha Public Schools officials were pleased with the ruling, which she said allows the Learning Community to continue its mission of helping students.
"I'm very happy that the Supreme Court understood the question before them, which was the question of equity and equal access for all kids," she said.
Critics said they will continue to press for changes in the Learning Community, which they have described as ineffective at raising student achievement, unfair to some districts and a waste of resources.
Millard school board member Mike Pate said the ruling surprised and disappointed him.
"That doesn't change my opinion of what I think is a layer of government that doesn't need to exist," Pate said. "I'm still going to fight for elimination of the Learning Community for taxpayer interests, more than anything."
Rick Black, superintendent of the Papillion-La Vista Public Schools, said the common levy is only one of his concerns.
"I think there's still several questions regarding the legislation that this didn't answer," Black said.
He noted escalating costs for transporting students between districts under the open-enrollment diversity plan, the Learning Community's unwieldy governance structure and the law as "specialized legislation" imposed on the 11 metro districts.
Lawmakers created the common levy to address Omaha officials' concerns that stagnation of their tax base would over time put them financially behind school districts at the edge of the metro.
Those districts have more agricultural land and, when the Learning Community was created, were seeing more economic development. Nearly three out of four students in the Omaha district qualify for federal lunch subsidies.
Lawmakers gave the Learning Community Council authority to levy 95 cents per $100 of property valuation on all land in Douglas and Sarpy Counties and part of Washington County. The money raised is distributed to member school districts based on their needs, which are determined by a state funding formula that takes into account enrollment, poverty and other factors.
The state constitution was amended to prohibit a state property tax in 1966 after Nebraska adopted a state sales and income tax.
In Friday's ruling, the court said, "the mere fact that a state-authorized tax supports a governmental purpose does not render it a tax for state rather than local purposes."
State and local purposes are inevitably mixed, it said.
The court said it had to consider the common levy in the context of the overall mission of the Learning Community.
Various provisions of the Learning Community legislation clearly relate to local issues, the high court said. It pointed, for example, to the open-enrollment student transfer plan and the learning centers for delivering services to disadvantaged youths.
The court said the Learning Community council has no discretion over how common levy proceeds are spent.
The legislative history, drawn from debate among senators, shows lawmakers intended that the Learning Community address diversity and other issues, the court said.
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