School Board Policy

Court Rulings

Case law is instructive with regard to the policy-making power of school boards. Case law suggests that school boards encounter particular difficulties when executing implied or discretionary policy-making powers or those powers not delineated by state law. In McGilvra v. Seattle School District No. 1 (1921), the Supreme Court of Washington ruled that a school board's financial support and maintenance of a medical care facility for students was unlawful, because it exceeded the limitations of state law. Unlike playgrounds and gymnasiums, the court expressed that “rendering medical, surgical, and dental services” was “foreign to the powers to be exercised by a school district or its officers …” (p. 14).

In like fashion, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in Barth v. Philadelphia School District (1958), decided that because school boards were not “constitutional bodies” (p. 561), they were not entitled to “the wide basic powers, functions and duties of Municipal Government” (p. 564). In this dispute, a local board was party to an agreement with the city of Philadelphia in financially supporting a program to curb juvenile delinquency. The court invalidated the program on the basis that it related marginally if at all to the statutory support of essential educational functions.

More recent cases reflect a more accommodating judicial stance toward implied policy-making power, part of which may be due to changes in social conditions and government. For example, in Clark v. Jefferson County Board of Education (1982), the Supreme Court of Alabama upheld a school board's power to support the operation of day care centers. Stressing the importance of the community education aspect, the school district was persuasive in demonstrating that such an effort was “in the best interest of the public schools in Alabama” (p. 27).

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