Cite as 351 Ark. 31 (2002)
ity; the supreme court's task is much more narrowly defined: to determine whether the trial court committed prejudicial legal error in determining whether the state school financing system at issue was violative of state constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal protection of the laws insofar as it denied equal educational opportunity to the public school students; if the court determines that no such error occurred, it must affirm the trial court's judgment, leaving the matter of achieving a constitutional system to the body equipped and designed to perform that function; clearly, the respective roles of the legislative and judicial branches relative to school funding are different, and the supreme court concluded that the two branches do not operate at cross purposes in the schoolfunding context.
- CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—EDUCATION ARTICLE—STATE DESIGNATED AS ENTITY TO MAINTAIN SYSTEM OF FREE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ARKANSAS.—The Education Article in the Arkansas Constitution designates the State as the entity to maintain a general, suitable, and efficient system of free public schools.
- CONSTITUTIONAL LAW—ROLE OF JUDICIARY—SCHOOL-FUNDING MATTER WAS JUSTICIABLE.—The judiciary has the ultimate power and the duty to apply, interpret, define, and construe all words, phrases, sentences, and sections of the state constitution as necessitated by the controversies before it; it is solely the function of the judiciary to so do; this duty must be exercised even when such action services as a check on the activities of another branch of government or when the court's view of the constitution is contrary to that of other branches, or even that of the public; the supreme court concluded that the school-funding matter before it was justiciable.
- EDUCATION—EFFICIENT SYSTEM OF EDUCATION—ROSE STANDARDS.—It has been held, in Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc., 790 S.W.2d 186 (Ky. 1989), that an efficient system of education must have as its goal to provide each and every child with at least the seven following capacities: (i) sufficient oral and written communication skills to enable students to function in a complex and rapidly changing civilization; (ii) sufficient knowledge of economic, social, and political systems to enable the student to make informed choices; (iii) sufficient understanding of governmental processes to enable the student to understand the issues that affect his or her community, state, and nation; (iv) sufficient self-knowledge and knowledge of his or her mental and physical wellness; (v) sufficient grounding in the arts to enable each student to appreciate
