Page:Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, 351 Ark. 31 (2002).pdf/68

98 compliance. No longer can the State operate on a "hands off" basis regarding how state money is spent in local school districts and what the effect of that spending is. Nor can the State continue to leave adequacy and equality considerations regarding school expenditures solely to local decision-making. This court admits to considerable frustration on this score, since we had made our position about the State's role in education perfectly clear in the DuPree case. It is not this court's intention to monitor or superintend the public schools of this state. Nevertheless, should constitutional dictates not be followed, as interpreted by this court, we will have no hesitancy in reviewing the constitutionality of the state's school-funding system once again in an appropriate case.

C and H, JJ., concur.

G, J., concurs in part and dissents in part.

I, J., not participating.

Special Justice C D joins.

 L. C, Justice, concurring. I concur in the resolution of this case as reflected in the majority's opinion. I write separately, however, to voice my concern over the personal tenor of this lawsuit as reflected in the briefs and motions filed by the attorneys for Lake View. During the course of this appeal, many motions, most of which were purely procedural, were filed by both the State and Lake View. In at least two of their pleadings, Lake View's attorneys raised the specter of racism. In short, they assdrted that they were being treated unfairly by the State and this court on the basis of the color of their skin.

In one of those pleadings, Lake View's attorneys compared their plight to that of the African-Americans in the landmark cases of Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), and Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Such allegations of racial discrimination are certainly very serious and should not be made lightly. However, from my view of the case, they are completely unfounded and without factual support. As such, the behavior of these attorneys, in my opinion, is reprehensible.