Summary Of Cases: San Antonio Independent School District V. Rodriguez

Lydia Handy Dr. Peter Lynch POL 220 20 April 2024 Wrongly Decided Cases: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez In June of 1968, concerned parents from the Edgewood School District in Western Texas filed a lawsuit in the district court suing seven school districts in the area, the Bexar County School Trustees, and the state of Texas. Historically, Texas used a method of funding schools that was reliant on funding from the state and local school districts, but as time passed and financial disparities from district to district became more prevalent, the state’s resources became strained (Ogletree, 2014). This led to the development of the Texas Minimum Foundation School Program, which aimed to fund 80% of schools’ costs, while the

Rodriguez claim that had Rodriguez won, the federal government would likely have to create a set of federal restraints on school funding systems that would be ineffective and restrictive because they would lack the local expertise necessary for a successful system (Sutton, 2008). In other words, what works effectively in one part of the country may cause harm and be inefficient in another part of the country, and this system of national education funding regulation was avoided due to Rodriguez losing. While some advocate that the ruling in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez helped avoid unnecessary government intervention and harm, I would argue that it did have direct harmful impacts on those living in poverty throughout the nation. Following the ruling, many states endorsed wealth equalization programs to create statewide minimums that would be spent on funding public schools regardless of the wealth of a particular district, however, this took decades (Sutton, 2008). This solution could have been imposed in a much timelier manner had the case been ruled differently, creating a greater sense of equality