Press Release

For Immediate Release: November 18, 2009
Contact: Jon Mills
Phone: 352-538-0380

Battle for Better Schools Shifts from the State House to the Courthouse

Tallahassee – The Florida Constitution requires that the State of Florida provide a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education.” Today, a coalition of parents and citizens groups filed a lawsuit against the state declaring that the state has failed in that responsibility.

“The Florida Constitution describes it as a paramount duty of the state government,” said Jon Mills, former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and former Dean of the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida. “Ten years ago more than 70% of Florida voters made it a constitutional obligation for the state to provide a high-quality education.”

Mills continued, “Today, we filed a complaint in Leon County Circuit Court asking this simple question: are Florida schools high quality or not?”

The statistics speak for themselves:

  • Florida is 41st in the nation per pupil expenditures
  • Florida ranks 50th in total public spending on education compared to in-state wealth
  • Florida ranks 30th for average teacher salaries
  • Florida ranks 47th in graduation rates
  • According to the Department of Justice 8.6% of Florida high school students reported being threatened or injured with a weapon, 13th worst in the study, and Florida is the second-worst state in terms of teachers being threatened or assaulted by students.
  • During 2007-08 there were 2,819 incidents of weapons on school grounds. There were 8,600 instances of battery and 30,412 incidents of fighting on school grounds.

“It is hard to look at this data and say that we are providing our children a safe, secure, and high-quality educational system,” said Kathleen Oropeza, Founder of Fund Education Now. “And so today we ask the Courts to do what the state has so far failed to do – ensure that our children receive a high quality education.”

The plaintiffs' attorneys include Jon Mills of Boies, Schiller & Flexner; E. Thom Rumberger of Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell; and Neil Chonin and Jodi Siegel, both with Southern Legal Counsel, a Gainesville public interest law firm.

For more information on the lawsuit, visit www.CIVICConcern.org/ExcellenceInEducationNow or www.FundEducationNow.org.