Poor, rural school systems aren’t alone as they await a ruling in the decade-old S.C. lawsuit questioning the fairness of how state government pays for public education.

Wealthier school districts are uneasy about what Judge Thomas W. Cooper Jr.’s decision — expected before the end of the summer — will mean to them.

Greenville County schools, for instance, could lose state money if the poor school districts win, said Chuck Saylors, chairman of that county’s school board.

“If he rules in favor of those districts, how is it going to affect mine?” Saylors said.

Jim Ray, superintendent of Spartanburg 3 schools, said such concerns are commonplace in the Upstate, a region far removed from the poor districts along the I-95 corridor that are suing the Legislature for more money.

“While there are plenty of people who believe in equitable funding, they’ve been concerned the General Assembly will seek the solution of just moving funds around,” Ray said. “There would be a tremendous upheaval if that happened.”

‘MAJOR OBLIGATION’

The question before Judge Cooper is whether the state’s 85 school districts provide their 670,000 students a “minimally adequate education.”

Cooper presided over a 16-month trial in which eight rural districts claimed state government fails to help them pay for the education that their children need. That trial ended in December.

Cooper must decide whether the Legislature’s annual funding of schools fulfills the state’s constitutional responsibility to provide a “minimally adequate” public education.

If recent court rulings involving school-funding disputes elsewhere are a gauge, Cooper has plenty of precedents for siding with the plaintiffs, the suing poor schools.

“Regardless of which way he rules,” said Saylors, a Greenville County school trustee, “the one place that is going to be the toughest to be sitting in is (in) the Legislature.”

Lawmakers, he said, “are going to have to deal with this directly. It relates to funding issues, whether they are adequate or inadequate, not only for public schools, but for every service and function of state government.”

State Sen. Scott Richardson, a Beaufort Republican, said legislators must address the school funding issues regardless of how Cooper rules.

“South Carolina is much more diverse today,” he said. “These old formulas based on static populations don’t work any more.”

Over the past decade, Republican legislators have pushed to roll back taxes on real estate and automobiles, sources of millions of dollars that helped fund public education needs.

School systems with healthy economies and broader property tax bases — mostly in population centers — compensated for the loss of state education aid by raising local taxes going to schools. Poor, rural districts did not have that option.

When Saylors was president of the state Parent Teachers Association, he visited some of the school systems suing the state.

“They are in desperate need of help,” he said. “But we can’t prop up needy districts at the expense of the larger districts. You’ve got to treat everybody equally.”

If that means finding new sources of revenue, including taxes, Saylors said, so be it. “It’s not a hard thing to grasp.”

Legislators rarely discussed the school-funding dispute, which surfaced in 1993 when 36 districts filed suit against the state. They cited fears about saying something that could hurt the state’s chance of winning the lawsuit.

Lately, though, lawmakers have been more forthcoming.

EQUAL FUNDING, REGARDLESS

In remarks June 27 to several hundred people at Irmo Elementary School, state Sen. Jake Knotts said, “I hope we lose the battle in the courts with the schools.”

Knotts, R-Lexington, predicted a plaintiffs’ victory would compel his colleagues to abolish property taxes, replacing that revenue source with a higher sales tax. Two legislative committees are studying that option now.

“Equity funding is the right thing to do, irrespective of what the court says we should do,” said Rep. Bill Cotty, R-Richland and chairman of the House ad-hoc tax review committee.

No matter what Cooper’s decision is, Cotty said he’s committed to looking at “all the needs of the state.”

“We almost have to, if we are in any systemic way, going to change how funds for schools are provided,” said Cotty, a former Richland 2 school board member.

Should Cooper rule for the plaintiffs, Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said the state does not have the money to address all its needs.

“It’s the most frustrating issue I’ve dealt with” in her 13 years as a lawmaker, she said.

Rep. Bob Walker, R-Spartanburg, said the state has done everything it can to provide education funding, especially to less-affluent districts.

“I think we have met constitutional requirements of what we’re doing. Could we do more or do better? That’s always open for judgment,” Walker said.

Like a growing number of his colleagues, Walker said the formula that lawmakers use to guide decisions in doling out state money should consider poverty a factor.

He said he would not be surprised if Cooper “gives us some guidelines where we’re falling short.”

Cooper, who has presided over the trial since 1999, has pledged to have a ruling before summer’s end.

Reach Robinson at (803) 771-8482 or brobinson@thestate.com.