An advocacy group’s attempt to bring educational policy-related decisions from the Nevada State Legislature to the courts invited questions from the Supreme Court. Recently, justices were told to overrule the finding of a lower court judge that the discussion belongs in not a courtroom but rather Nevada’s Assembly and Senate.
Justices made no immediate ruling following lively arguments claiming that Nevada’s constitution would not ban putting 60 students in a third-standard classroom. Heidi Parry Stern, the Solicitor General for Nevada Attorney General’s Office, was among the law officers who made those arguments.
Lawyer Bradley Schrager, who represents many parents supported by the Educate Nevada Now group, asked justices to allow litigants to sue and hold elected legislators responsible for unsatisfied promises.
Schrager told Las Vegas justices that it is a situation about whether the schools are provided with enough resources or not. Schrager started his argument with an allusion to bad truths regarding Nevada’s public education system.
Nevada’s schools for students from kindergarten to the 12th grade have been about or at the lowest part of nationwide rankings for per-student spending, student achievement and class size. State legislators were told that meeting national student-teacher ratios would require around $800 million as new spending.
The Rogers Foundation from Las Vegas funds the said advocacy group. It is a non-profit organization with erstwhile Nevada university chancellor and media mogul Jim Rogers as its late founder and Beverly Rogers as its active founder.
Regarding the case, Educate Nevada Now stated that the quality and state of Nevada’s schools would keep declining if there is no court intervention.
According to Schrager, the appeal and lawsuit represented a bid to restore the concept of an educational crisis and use new tools here.
Judge at Nevada’s District Court James Wilson refused to find whether the Legislature breached constitutional needs to offer resources for basic and sufficient education to students. The refusal essentially contributed to Wilson throwing out the Nevada lawsuit last October.
Back then, Wilson wrote that there was no jurisdiction for courts over legislative choices on whether the money was enough to finance public school operations.
Schrager described money as only one resource before Supreme Court Justice Douglas W. Herndon interrupted him and asked whether the money was the main issue.
As per Schrager, the main questions in this lawsuit concern financing, governmental power separation between the judicial, executive and legislative branches of administration as well as political choices of the Nevada State Legislature.
Schrager stated that legal officers like him are not demanding that the court put school standards in place. Instead, he said that they are asking it to deal with the same standards that Nevada has already established.
Stern acknowledged the chance of big class sizes as she responded to a query on whether the growth of third-standard classes to 60 students would be unconstitutional or not. As a reply to the question, Stern stated that she finds the above-mentioned constitutional. At the same time, she stated that Nevada’s Constitution uses aspirational language about educational standards.
Judge Elissa Cadish also asked whether there is a way of holding the administration responsible for failing to meet those standards. Stern replied that the judiciary does not offer that way and said that performance goals are unconstitutional requirements.
The attorney also said that the public votes to hold legislators accountable and that letting them litigate the Nevada State Legislature would make a morass of courtroom challenges.
There may be a court ruling on the ‘Shea v. Nevada’ case anytime soon.