Wilhoit's Law and Education

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

That pithy little line is known as Wilhoit's Law. Sometimes mistakenly attributed to political scientist Francis Wilhoit, it's actually the work of musician and composer Frank Wilhoit (read an interesting interview with him here). Wilhoit posted the remark as part of a larger blog in 2018, and it rapidly gained traction.

I'm struck by how well it applies to the modern school choice movement. 

Take one of the old arguments for charter schools that we heard from some legislators. "Public schools are too tied up in rules and red tape," they said, "so we should have some schools that are free of all that stuff." Which was an odd argument coming from the people who tied public schools up in red tape to begin with.

Or consider the current state of affairs in places like Florida, where it's all Parents' Rights! when we're talking about naughty books or mentioning LGBTQ persons, but where parents who want to seek transitioning support for their own children might just have to be convicted of child abuse. 

Or consider Florida's religion-based civics program, which mandates christianist indoctrination even as other forms of "indoctrination" are forbidden.

Sometimes it's just a matter of money. Having money offers unfettered protection, while the lack of money restricts choices while throwing the poor on the mercy of whatever protection the state wants to provide. 

That's vouchers (education savings account, tax credit scholarships, whatever branding you prefer). Vouchers are about withdrawing the support, protection and guarantees of the government in exchange for a paltry sum that will leave the poors still restricted and unprotected. Wealthy families a choice of schools, in many states with guarantees that the government will in no way interfere with whatever religious programming the school wants to provide, while the less wealthy will have to settle for whatever school will accept them, with no state oversight or accountability to protect that family's right not to be scammed. 

When your system is set up so that people get all the freedom or protection than can afford to pay for, you've set up a more "natural" way to achieve the goals that Wilhoit lays out. 

And as Wilhoit indicates, much of what may seem hypocritical or contradictory about some ed reform policy makes perfect sense when you consider who gets to be free, and who has to be bound along with who gets protection, and who gets none. 

Education and the Nation

It has become standard for folks on the pro-public education side of ongoing debates to talk about public schools as a foundation of democracy. I think that's true, but perhaps beside the point.

True because it is our delivery system for trying to, or at least saying we intend to, provide basic tools for all young humans to have a shot at achieving that whole life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We've understood that connection for a long time, back to the days when we had laws in place to deliberately deny some Americans access to a free public education because we understood that it would be harder to hold them down if education was allowed to lift them up. 

It's also true because public education not only serves the public, but creates the public. We understand on some level that people who don't know stuff and don't understand stuff--those people are easier to steer and not always good at making healthy choices for the country as a whole.

But all that may be beside the point because we don't all agree that democracy is important. For some people, the government needs to be aligned with the right values and run by the right people, and a democratic approach that allows the wrong people to have a say in government is bad. 

This is not a new argument in this country. You can't build an economy that depends on the labor of enslaved people without making mental gymnastics to embed the idea that some people are more actual people than others. And if you create a system of government based on the notion that only True Believers should be in charge, you're also inclined to believe that some people are more people than others.

As a country, our history is built around setting up ideals and then trying, with very mixed results, to live up to them. That struggle doesn't make us a particular evil or wretched nation as much as it makes us a very human nation. After all, is there anything more human than trying to live out your life as if you really believe what you claim, try, or aspire to believe. It turns out to be really hard, and the people who come close are rare enough to become well known for it.

So, "all men are created equal" says the guy keeping enslaved human beings at home. "Let's establish religious liberty," say the folks executing and banishing fellow believers for believing exactly the right thing. And just as surely as we have kept violating those values, we have also tried to stand up and do better. Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves. We are large. We contain multitudes.

Those contradictions always find their way into schools. That is not new. The fight over how to undo generations of slavery and mistreatment under the law found its way into schools. What is arguably different this time is that schools are being used to drive changes the nation instead of vice versa.

We are living through a decades-long argument about the very nature of the public education mission, and that is being used to fuel the current political argument. 

I suppose that means, in part, the so-called culture wars, though as one of the principal architects of that war has told us, quite plainly, that the purpose of the culture wars is to drive a wedge between the public and their schools, to decrease trust in public schools so that they can more easily be swept aside.

Because if we can raise a generation that thinks of public schools as a toxic remnant of the past, we can get closer to an "I've got mine, Jack" nation, where "freedom" means I can get what I can and you--well, if you have obstacles in the path to your freedom, that's not my problem (even if I helped put those obstacles there). It's a nation guided by the kind of conservatism Frank Wilhoit described when he wrote “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

I still have no doubt that there are people who are sincere in believing that we would have a better world with market-based education, with education-flavored businesses that live or die based on their ability to serve the public, but which would eventually yield a rising tide that lifts all boats. I think they're absolutely wrong--that to transform education into a private commodity that parents must purchase (with a tiny bit of government voucher assistance) in a free(ish) market would yield us a country divided between educational haves and have-nots, a system that would not empower poor parents, but further impoverish them. And while I believe in the sincerity of some p[roponents, I also believe that some DeVos-style fans know full well that they are proposing a change to an education system aimed at sorting rather than lifting or leveling, and for them, that's a feature, not a bug.

And once we accept the idea that schools should sort and that "freedom" means "you're on your own in this race, no matter how far behind we made you start out," we've begun spreading that idea throughout society.

My frustration for all these decades is that very little of the debate and discussion is about any of that. The modern reform movement has been all about changing the whole promise and purpose of public education without admitting that's what's going on, without discussing what's really on the table, without talking about what we're really talking about. And those of us who defend public education have too often been suckered into doing the same. Just as in the larger culture, folks keep hollering, "But that is against democratic principles" as if the honest answer wouldn't be, "Well, yes, that's the point."

Part of the experience of our country is an endless debate, an unrelenting struggle over who we are and what we're about. I don't expect it to ever end. This is the hard work part of a pluralistic society--no matter what ideas you champion, when it comes to your opponents, you will never achieve either a perfect compromise or a total victory. 

Maybe it's a true thing that I've come to understand, or maybe it's just me reflecting that I grew up in this country, but I've come to believe that Truth is not a verifiable spot in the constellation of ideas, but a point that is defined by the tension between a complex of contradicting and striving ideas. It's all about balance, and like any balancing act, it requires constant shift and adjustment. Like any balancing act, it is never settled, not even when one overbalances in one direction and falls on one's butt.

Cultural debates usually drive school; right now, schools are being used to drive cultural and political debates. That's a threat to education because it converts students into pawns, tools to make a rhetorical point instead of young humans trying to find their way, figuring out how to be their best selves, how to be fully human in the world. 

A nation is great because its people--its persons-- have the chance to become great. Not just the ones who believe The Right Thing, not just the ones who come from The Right Background. Education is not a commodity sold to parents, but a public good and a societal responsibility shared by us all because we all have to share in the results. That's the promise of public education that I believe in and that I will continue to argue for--that it is a debt we owe to every young human in this country to provide each and every one with a free quality education that empowers them and builds a better nation for all of us (not just the fortunate few). 

We have failed many times. But I have to believe that no matter how badly you did yesterday, today you can always do better. Let's do that. 

ICYMI: Bombs Bursting Somewhere Edition (7/3)

I expect my family to celebrate my birthday even though I am fat and balding and sometimes a jerk. I expect to celebrate my country's birthday no matter how many of her ideals she has failed to live up to or how many shenanigans are currently being perpetrated in her name. More to the point, I refuse yp yield the field to people who would inflict a warped and toxic idea of what constitutes a real American. However you cope with the holiday, here's some reading from last week.

School's Out Forever

If you're only going to read one item on the list this week, here it is. Kathryn Joyce writing for Salon about Arizona's new bonehead idea, how they got there, how they ignored the will of the people, and what happens next.

How pro-charter school tech billionaires quietly influence state government

Ian Round at the Daily Memphian has a story about some folks have finally noticed the Chiefs for Change, Jeb Bush's old reformster newtork, is Up To Something, and try to figure out what. Update: this turns out to be behind a paywall, but TC Weber has a summary of the choice bits that you can read here. 

Indiana police set as state handgun permit requirement ends

The education quote is this one:

"A guy can stand out there — or a girl or whoever with a rifle, an AR-15 or a handgun — and stand there on a sidewalk looking at the school. The difference is this: We can't even stop and ask them what they're doing because of this law."

The CRT Chill

would have been a better headline that the dumb one that Time chose, but this is a fine example of how anti-"CRT" laws have working to make teachers nervous and quiet.

The Stolen Year

Emily Popel interviews Anya Kamenetz about her new book, and the result is some useful insights.

Florida's christian nationalist civic training

Ana Ceballos and Sommer Brugal of the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald talked to some of the teachers taking Florida's training for the new Hillsdale-backed civics "education," and it's swell. Well, other than the overt pushing of Christianity and historical inaccuracy, it's swell. 

Are Christians to Blame for the Political Mess We Find Ourselves In?

Nancy Flanagan offers some thoughtful reflection on the place of religion and religious myths in our educational system.

One more piece about the praying coach

If you can stand to read one more piece about this Very Bad SCOTUS decision, this is a good one in Vanity Fair.

LGBTQ clubs were havens for students. Now they’re under attack.

Hannah Natanson with this crushingly sad piece that shows how real, live human people get chewed up by political opportunism feeding panic.

The testing predators have beaten ACT and the College Board\

Akil Bello at Forbes talking about the victory of the test prep industry over the keepers of the testing flame.

SCOTUS Praying Coach Supplemental Reading

Let's revisit the case of Coach Kennedy, the guy who just wanted to offer a quiet personal prayer at the fifty yard line with his student athletes and a couple hundred interested onlookers. Here's an account of the basics, if you need to review.

If you (or people you talk to about this kind of thing) are still struggling with the weird disconnect between what Justice Gorsuch says happened and what, well, everybody else says, here are a couple of items that make good supplemental reading for the case. 

First, there's this piece from the Seattle Times. Bremerton, the site of all this noise, is right nearby, so this newspaper has been covering this story since the beginning, like, back in the days when Coach Kennedy was explaining that he was deliberately leading students in prayer to make them better people and long before he got legal advice to go with the "quiet personal prayer" thing. 

I also recommend the decision of the Ninth Circuit, in which the court lays out the timeline of events clearly and with a fair amount of judicial sass.

If you aren't in the mood to read through the Ninth Circuit opinion, then the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has selected and contextualized all the best parts, and you can read her handiwork here. Either way, you can take in this nifty opening paragraph:

Unlike Odysseus, who was able to resist the seductive song of the Sirens by being tied to a mast and having his shipmates stop their ears with bees’ wax, our colleague, Judge O’Scannlain, appears to have succumbed to the Siren song of a deceitful narrative of this case spun by counsel for Appellant, to the effect that Joseph Kennedy, a Bremerton High School (BHS) football coach, was disciplined for holding silent, private prayers. That narrative is false.

I know this is not a fun case to wallow in, but we're going to be feeling the effects of this for a long time. And the fact that the christo-majority mounted a fictional verion of events from which to launch a takedown of the Lemon Rules, is just a sign that this was a deliberate stroke, and by no means the end of the story. Which means we should all do our homework and understand what the story actually is. 

VA: Loudoun Schools Hit With Million Dollar Culture Wars Lawsuit

Well, here we go. Far-right CRT activists are upping their game, which in Virginia means suing the local school district for a cool $1.5 million, among other things. And they've got some high-powered MAGA backing to do it. The Loudoun County Schools, a very wealthy, very white district, is being dragged to court.

The lawsuit charges that the defendants, which include the district, administrators and school board members, have adopted policies and practices that are "intended to force or have the effect of forcing Plaintiffs into choosing between their fundamental right to direct the education, moral instruction, and upbringing of their children, and their right to free public elementary and secondary education."

The specific items they list include requiring schools and teachers to secretly facilitate gender ansition (sorry--that's "transition"), providing psychological treatment or counseling without parental knowledge or consent, changing names or pronouns without parental knowledge or consent, soliciting student information about long list of attitudes and habits, intentionally doing "social and emotional learning stuff" in order to affect "a child's behavior, emotional or attitudinal characteristics" re: race or gender without parental knowledge or approval, using racial "balancing," and failing to provide a safe or orderly environment.

The list has the standard quality of feeling like a subtweet that is aimed at specific issues (I mean, do you have any idea how many times I adopted a child's preferred nickname in class without looping in the parents), but Loudoun County Schools come with plenty of subtext pre-loaded because they have been one of the Ground Zeros for the mask/CRT/LGBTQ flaps all collected under the parental rights protests.

Those were accelerated when the district decided to defy Governor Youngkin's order to end school mask mandates. Loudoun is also the district of the infamous bathroom assault, where a boy wearing a skirt sexually assaulted a female student. The two had met in bathrooms for sex before, but this time she wanted to talk and instead became the object of an ugly partner rape. But her father was arrested for attacking another parent at a board meeting, and the right wing media focused on the boy wearing a skirt to sell the rankest kind of fantasy--that a trans student had used a district trans policy to go into a girls bathroom and sexually assault someone. That just fueled more anger over  policy 8040 regarding trans students. This is also the district that fired and was forced to reinstate the phys ed teacher who refused to use preferred pronouns. All of this, plus the usual ginned-up "CRT" panic, underlies the lawsuit, which has been filed on behalf of plaintiffs who are mostly veterans of Loudoun conflicts. Oh, and board member recalls.

Clint Thomas. His daughter was suspended for refusing to wear a mask in class, and Thomas then started appearing on the Fox News circuit. He complained that the district was suspending National Honor Society students, community volunteers, and other student leaders "for pushing back against 'woke' educators defying the governor's order." 

Abbie Platt. Another anti-mask mom on the Fox circuit.  She characterized the school's actions as "psychological warfare" and complained that her daughter and twenty other students had been "segregated" by being stuck in the auditorium. Her son, she said, has a medical excuse that the school wouldn't honor.

Erin Dunbar. Wrote a letter to the editor decrying "tyrannical overreach."

Amy Jahr. Organized a fundraiser to sue the district over its nonrenewal of a teacher's contract after she complained of sexual touching by students. (Welcome to tenureless teaching.) Jahr also turned up on Ingraham Angle to talk about one of the board meetings that became a circus with "CRT" protesters (including Senator Dick Black). 

Michelle Mege. Mege has been a leading figure in the attempt to bury Loudoun Schools under Freedom of Information  Act requests. She calls herself a "core volunteer" for Fight for Schools, one of the many, many groups that have sprung up. Mege made news when the district told her it would cost $36K to fill her requests, which is probably related to the number--95, at the rate of about three a week.

Elicia Brand. The lawyer representing the father of the victim of the bathroom assault.

Elizabeth Perrin. Showed up on Fox to protest a "pornographic" book as well as "Critical Race Theory" At a board meeting, she said "It is not political, it is parentals, and I absolutely refuse to co-parent with LCPS."

Megan Rafalski. With her husband and one other parent, sued the district when it tried to get meetings back under control by tightening rules on who could speak. 

You get the picture. Most of the plaintiffs have plenty of experience battling the district on the usual constellation of grievances.

And they have found (or been found by) the perfect law firms for the job. The Binnall Law Group is a "boutique" litigation firm, with some practice in Title IX law. But the other firm...

The other firm is America First Legal, and golly bob, howdy, but they're a crew.

AFL was established in February of 2021 by former senior White House advisor Stephen Miller and counselor to the Attorney General Gene Hamilton. They were set up to fight Democrat policies in the courts. Their board includes Mark Meadows, former acting AG General Matt Whitaker, and former director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought. They were announced with great joy and fanfare on the right (the American Spectator called them "a light in the darkness"). Trump himself gave them an endorsement. The Conservative Partnership Institute (a Jim Demint joint that's part of the State Policy Network) also takes credit for helping create AFL.

Their stated mission is, in part,

We founded America First Legal to save our country from this coordinated campaign. With your support, we will oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.

Miller has had plenty to say about this suit:

The extreme social gender experiments being forced onto small children are nothing short of government-directed child abuse and child sexual exploitation

These are mafia tactics from Loudoun schools, being used to sexualize and indoctrinate children as young as five, all in the name of forcing radical gender ideology onto captive minors. If this was happening outside the context of a school, the adults engineering and sanctioning this madness would be under criminal investigation,

This is the moment when America’s patriotic parents say: ‘Enough. It ends here. We draw the line.’ We are proudly in court, on their behalf, to vindicate the most sacred rights of parents and families against astonishing corruption, abuse, and misconduct. And we are just getting started.

And indeed the AFL has a new Center for Legal Equality that is presumably going to focus on these sorts of cases.

Meanwhile, in this case at hand, the plaintiffs list a whole bunch of specific claims, though they're not very specific. Things like "failing to provide a physically safe and secure learning environment" and "hiding curriculum materials from parents." There are plenty of complaints about the 8040 policy, not letting parents speak at board meetings, and there's even a reference to Mege's FOIA request bill. But mostly there's the now-standard blanket set of complaints about All The Various Woke Stuff:

With intentional disregard for their legal duties and obligations to Plaintiffs and other parents, Defendants have used and are using taxpayer money to advance a “woke” agenda of racial and gender indoctrination, disconnected from any legitimate academic purpose. In the name of “social justice,” Defendants are knowingly, intentionally, systemically, and unlawfully violating Plaintiffs’ rights, and the rights of all other Loudoun County Public school parents.

There are appendices listing the 8040 policy and its statements about expected equal treatment of LGBTQ+ students, so I guess part of the assertion here is that LGBTQ+ student rights automatically infringe on the rights of straight students?

What do the plaintiffs want? There are eight pieces of relief that they seek:

1) A declaration that they're right, and also they'd like the court to make the district throw out the 8040 policy.

2) Tell the district to knock it off and stop "depriving" the plaintiffs of their "constitutional and legal rights."

3) Appoint a special state overseer to ride herd on the district.

4) Make the district pay tuition to send the plaintiff's children to some less naughty school.

5) A judgement "jointly and severally" of "not less than $1,500,00" in damages.

6) With interest. (Really)

7) All of plaintiffs' costs.

8) Anything else the court wants to throw in.

A reminder that the school district is itself a defendant, so any money awards will be paid by taxpayers. 

The anti crowd has tried to hit this district with every cooling, scary measure it can think of, and they have remained unbowed, so here we are. Stay tuned to see how this case shakes out. Also, watch for more such suits, particularly in places like Florida where the Don't Say Gay law lets anybody sue over anything that makes them sad. We know where they can call for a lawyer to take the case.

In the meantime, in other news, Loudoun schools are "seeing large uptick in teacher resignations, openings 'through the roof'" for some reason. They had to offer signing bonuses to get teachers to sign up for summer school, and they still didn't get all they needed. The story does hit at a novel wrinkle--the district is too expensive for most teachers to live there on a teacher's salary, so most commute, and now that gas prices are up there, nobody's in a hurry to do that, either. 

Stay tuned.

Hillsdale College President: Teachers Are The Dumbest

Hillsdale College is one of the leaders in Christian Nationalist education, and have been pushing charter school programs for years. We've looked at them before. Their current president is Larry Arnn, a guy who is a lot heavier on the conservative than the Christian. And it turns out he has some spectacularkly insulting thoughts about teachers and education.

Arnn's conservative credentials are impeccable. He's one of the founders of the Claremont Institute, a conservative thinky tank (mission-- "to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life") founded by students of Harry Jaffa (Jaffa was the Goldwater speechwriter who penned the "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice..." line); Hillsdale has a library in named after him. The Institute was quiet for years, but has emerged as a big time Trump booster funded by folks like the DeVos tribe and the Bradleys, and pumping out ideas for selling the Big Lie and the Insurrection. Arnn is also a trustee at the Heritage Foundation, which at one point offered him its presidency. 

Arnn has been a Trump supporter, and the college has fallen right into MAGAland as well. Or as Politico Magazine put it in 2018

Trump University never died. It’s located in the middle of bucolic southern Michigan, halfway between Lansing and Fort Wayne, 100 miles and a world away from Detroit.

The college uses Trump mailing lists to raise money. They used to sponsor Rush Limbaugh's show. They get grads placed on the staff of legislators such as Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy. In 2017, for some reason, Senator Pat Toomey created a little piece of tax reform that would have carved out atax treat for Hillsdale alone. Arnn was on the shortlist for Secretary of Education for Trump; when Trump whipped his super-duper 1776 Commission to create some nationalistic education stuff for the country, he put Arnn in charge (and Hillsdale still offers a version of that terrible "patriotic" curriculum. They don't have a great history with LGBTQ students. Erik Prince (Betsy DeVos's brother) is a Hillsdale graduate. 

Hillsdale has a charter presence in many states, but they landed a particularly generous patron in Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, and it was in a special closed-door reception that Arnn sprung Lee as a surprise guest and proceeded to slam teachers. But somebody made a video and handed it off to a local news station, so now we know some of the awful things that Arnn said and that Lee let slide.

As reported by NewsChannel 5 of Nashville, Arnn's comments included:

“The teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country."

“They are taught that they are going to go and do something to those kids.... Do they ever talk about anything except what they are going to do to these kids?"

"In colleges, what you hire now is administrators…. Now, because they are appointing all these diversity officers, what are their degrees in? Education. It's easy. You don't have to know anything."

“The philosophic understanding at the heart of modern education is enslavement…. They're messing with people's children, and they feel entitled to do anything to them.”

“You will see how education destroys generations of people. It's devastating. It's like the plague.”

“Here's a key thing that we're going to try to do. We are going to try to demonstrate that you don't have to be an expert to educate a child because basically anybody can do it.”

Given the chance by Channel 5 to reply, Lee's office didn't even try 

"Under Gov. Lee, the future of public education looks like well-paid teachers and growing a workforce to support our students and build the profession," Laine Arnold said in an email.

Lee has always been a big fan of privatization in education, and he has been particularly excited about bringing Hillsdale's brand to Tennessee. That may be why he never interrupted or contradicted Arnn in front of an audience that laughed at some of these lines. Nobody is backing away from this; Kevin Williamson at The National Review chirped up today to say that Arnn's dumbest of the dumbest crack is true. 

Lee Believes that Hillsdale has a "number of initiatives that align with our priorities in Tennessee," according to Lee spokesperson Casey Black. Lee has talked about the importance of teaching "true American history, unbiased and nonpolitical," but Hillsdale promises neither, with a Libertarian, nationalist approach that hews to one narrow interpretation of history. Lee also claims that "Hillsdale's charter schools in our state will be public secular classical education schools," and while Hillsdale has learned to keep its Christian bent less obvious in its charter schools, there's no question that religion is part of its brand. Per its website:

In the words of its modern mission statement, the College “considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law.”

If you are shaking your head at Tennessee, I suggest you look around your own state first, because these public education-hating faux Christian right wingers are all over the country, and when he's selling his product in public, Arnn is rarely as blunt as he was before the Tennessee crowd. Make sure everyone gets to hear what he really thinks.

PA: Court Makes School District Pay Taxpayers Back

The Lower Merion School District is the one that was sued six years ago for raising taxes too much. The suit has yielded the unusual spectacle of a court overruling a local school district on the matter of taxation. Now there's a new chapter in that saga. We'll look at that, but first, a little review:

As part of Pennsylvania's ongoing work to crush public education promote fiscal responsibility, for the last decade we've had the bi-partisan fiscal straightjacket that is Act 1, which declares that schools may not raise taxes above a certain index without either a voter referendum or state-level permission. Lower Merion has allegedly been going the state exception route for the last ten budgets by claiming a projected deficit that would affect pensions and special ed. Here's how the district put it in response to the decision:

In Lower Merion, recent enrollment growth has exceeded projections and the impact on staffing and facilities planning has been significant and unexpected. Additionally, the District faces increasing unfunded and underfunded state-mandated costs, including retirement and special education. Without the ability to plan ahead for its financial needs and maintain adequate reserves, the District will lose critical flexibility during a time of uncertainty and growth. The implication for school programs is enormous.

Lower Merion is one of the wealthiest districts in the state, and its budget process seems a bit....well, loose.

It would seem that Lower Merion may have the worst budget process ever. The lawsuit and the ruling both leaned on what appear to be some serious mistakes in the predicted outcome of the year:

For instance, in 2009-10, the district projected a $4.7 million budget hole but ended the year with a $9.5 million overage. In 2011-12, it anticipated a $5.1 million gap but wound up with $15.5 million to the plus side.

Lower Merion business manager Victor Orlando testified that the district has between $50 and $60 million in the bank. This is in itself requires some of the aggressive accounting that the lawsuit complains about-- Pennsylvania also has laws about how much money a district can park in its general fund. But districts can get around those by parking money in designated funds ("This $20K is in our Library Doily Fund, not the general fund").

So it's not like the district didn't ask for some trouble. But the guy who delivered is a fascinating story himself.

Lord knows the world is filled with people who want to sue their school district because they think their taxes are too high. Who is this guy who actually did it?

That would be Arthur Wolk. (Wolk's co-plaintiffs are Philip Browndeis, Lee Quillen, Catherine Marchand, and Stephen Gleason). Wolk is an attorney who has made a name for himself in aviation law, scoring some big-payday lawsuits against companies on the behalf of victims of various plane crashes. Wolk is semi-retired, pushing eighty, and called in this profile article a " pugnacious pit bull." And when it comes to detractors, Wolk has a reputation for libel lawsuits (you can get a pretty good picture of that image from this blog post entitled "Has Arthur Alan Wolk Finally Learned That He Cannot Sue Every Critic?" Wolk is clearly neither shy nor backward-- you can read more about him on his wikipedia page, which was set for him by the marketing company he hired to give him more web presence.

Wolk's two children did not attend school in the district, but he has a big house there and pays more taxes than he thinks he ought to. When the district's superintendent released a letter accusing Wolk of trying to establish public schools as lesser than private schools by choking off taxpayer support, Wolk replied with a letter of his own (referring to himself in third person).

There was no need for a tax increase this year or any year in the last ten according to audited statements. We have the highest paid teachers, highest paid administrators, and too many of them, and the most expensive school buildings and the highest per student cost of any place in the nation. Our school performance is on par with districts that spend half of what LMSD spends which means that the administrators have failed in their jobs and the people supposed to provide oversight, the Directors, have done nothing.

He also brings up senior citizens on fixed incomes who are afraid of losing their homes, because no discussion of school taxes in Pennsylvania can occur without bringing up the spectre of senior citizens afraid of losing their homes. I am not sure exactly who in Wolk's uber-rich neighborhood could be worried about losing their home over taxes.

Wolk has been explaining himself on the subject for months. In May he wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the district's wild spending way, creating debt by building "two Taj Mahal high schools" along with bunches of busing.

Wolk's critics (and he has plenty) repeatedly accuse him of advocating a two tier system, with just the basics for public school students. Here's an oft-quoted excerpt from his lawsuit.

Public school education means basic adherence to the minimum requirements established and imposed upon school district by the State Board of Education, Public education is not courses, programs, activities, fee laptop computers and curriculums that are neither mandated nor normally part of a public education standard, and are normally provided only by private institutions at larger expense to individual patrons who prefer to afford their children education and opportunities that are neither required, nor offered, nor appropriate for public education paid for by the taxpayers.

The judge (Senior Judge Joseph A Smyth) in the case ruled that the tax increase was unnecessary and excessive, and he revoked it. Which is, as near as anyone can tell, unprecedented.

That was back in 2016. The district appealed, and a three-judge Commonwealth Court panel said dismissed the appeal because they filed it too late. Yippee, said Wolk. Also, Wolk said he wanted to see the district refund the extra money "or I'll sue them again for contempt." The court ruled against Lower Merion in March of 2020; the district appealed. The PA Supreme Court denied that appeal in October of 2020. 

And in November of 2020, Wolk by God filed a motion to hold the district and its lawyers in contempt and also  "for the school district, its administrators and lawyers; to be fined $100,000 for every day that they do not comply with Judge Smyth’s decision and order." That's the order dated August 29, 2016, so the amount of the fine would be many millions of dollars. Also, Wolk asked for a grand jury "to investigate the fraud committed by the Lower Merion School District, its Adminstrators and Lawyers, from 2005 to the present, and to issue indictments for those found to have perpetrated, advised or sanctioned such theft.” In April of 2021, Superintendent Robert Copeland announced his intention to resign; Wolk filed suit to cut off his pension. One gets the impression that Wolk is pretty angry.

Now, finally, the whole business seems to have reached a conclusion; the district has agreed to pay $27 million back to taxpayers over a period of several years. --$15 million now, and $4 mill each for 2023, 2024, and 2025, all to anyone who owned property in the district in August of 2016. There's never been anything quite like it in Pennsylvania, and I'm not sure what lesson anyone has learned other than A) don't piss off Arthur Wolk and B) the courts can take over a basic function of a school district if they so desire, even if the district is plenty rich.