O'NEAL v. School District No. 15 School Board

451 P.2d 791, 1969 Wyo. LEXIS 120
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 18, 1969
Docket3764
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 451 P.2d 791 (O'NEAL v. School District No. 15 School Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
O'NEAL v. School District No. 15 School Board, 451 P.2d 791, 1969 Wyo. LEXIS 120 (Wyo. 1969).

Opinion

Mr. Chief Justice GRAY

delivered the opinion of the court.

Plaintiff Bruce O’Neal is an eighth grade student residing in School District 15 at Story, Wyoming, and for the school year 1968-1969 enrolled at Central Junior High in Sheridan, Wyoming. The defendants are members of the board of the Story district and request was made of them by plaintiffs to transport Bruce to and from Central Junior High on the bus the district operates between Story and Sheridan primarily for its high school students. Prior to that time the district had adopted and enforced *792 without exception a regulation to the effect that no transportation would be furnished grade school children for whom the district maintained and provided educational facilities. In reliance upon such regulation the defendants denied the request. The within action, which basically is an attack upon the legality of the district’s regulation as it applied to Bruce, was then commenced. From an adverse result below the plaintiffs appeal.

The thrust of plaintiffs’ attack is that the board’s denial of the request was arbitrary and capricious under the circumstances. In support of their claim plaintiffs adduced evidence tending to show that Central Junior High offered certain advantages to Bruce, among which was a hot lunch program, a separate study hall, a gymnasium, a shop program, and a science department. It was also established without contradiction that space was available on the bus and Bruce could be transported without imposing additional costs upon the district.

The record also discloses that the district maintained a school at Story for grades one through eight, the school having approximately 73 pupils enrolled, about 20 of whom were in the seventh and eighth grades. While it appears that all of plaintiffs’ criticisms leveled against the school were unwarranted, it is not seriously questioned by defendants that Sheridan’s Central Junior High did offer advantages not available at Story. It was also conceded that the district, in addition to its own high school students, transported other students living along its bus route.

In disposing of the matter, the trial court, among other things, determined that although § 21-115, W.S.1957, did not preclude the district from permitting Bruce to ride the bus, the matter was one within the discretion of the district and plaintiffs had failed to prove that the board acted arbitrarily and capriciously. Plaintiffs, of course, accept the holding that the statute did not prevent the board from granting the request — a matter we need not decide — but contend that the trial court erred in not determining that the board abused its discretion.

The record is not entirely clear as to whether the regulation or policy of which plaintiffs complain was initially adopted by the electors of the school district at the annual district meeting or by a preceding board. No point of this omission has been made by the parties, however, and perhaps it was of no significance inasmuch as the defendants, a short time prior to the filing of the action herein, reviewed and reaffirmed the district’s policy. We mention it simply to demonstrate that plaintiffs appear to be under some misapprehension as to the role of the courts in the premises. Their approach here is on the basis that the board, in denying the request, acted in a quasi-judicial capacity and its denial is not .supported by substantial evidence of record. Most of their argument and the authorities upon which they rely are devoted to that principle. The real question is whether or not plaintiffs met their burden in establishing that the regulation adopted by the district in what was tantamount to1 an exercise of its legislative powers was arbitrary and unreasonable.

In that situation the courts are not concerned with the wisdom of the policy or regulation, Board of Directors of Independent School District of Waterloo v. Green, 259 Iowa 1260, 147 N.W.2d 854, 858; Leonard v. School Committee of Attleboro, 349 Mass. 704, 212 N.E.2d 468, 472, 14 A.L.R.3d 1192; Davis v. Fentress County Board of Education, 218 Tenn. 280, 402 S.W.2d 873, 875; Flory v. Smith, 145 Va. 164, 134 S.E. 360, 362, 48 A.L.R. 654. The full impact of the scope of review is well stated in Starkey v. Board of Education of Davis County School District, 14 Utah 2d 227, 381 P.2d 718, 720, as follows:

“It is not for the courts to be concerned with the wisdom or propriety of the resolution as to its social desirability, nor whether it best serves the objectives of education, nor with the convenience or inconvenience of its application to the plaintiff in his particular circumstances. So *793 long as the resolution is deemed by the Board of Education to serve the purpose of best promoting the objectives of the school and the standards for eligibility are based upon uniformly applied classifications which bear some reasonable relationship to the objectives, it cannot be said to be capricious, arbitrary or unjustly discriminatory.”

Such regulations are presumed to be reasonable, Bess v. Park, 144 Cal.App.2d 798, 301 P.2d 978, 983; Hamilton and Mort, The Law and Public Education, Ch. 5, p. 123 (2d Ed.); and based upon a knowledge of the facts, 2 Am.Jur.2d, Administrative Law, § 748, p. 649.

With respect to the matter of transportation, it was the district’s sole prerogative in the first instance, under the provisions of § 21-115, to determine whether or not the district was to maintain a school with grades from one through eight, for example, or in lieu thereof to transport those school children residing in the district • to adjoining districts. That decision, as shown, w.as made several years ago, and the regulation here under attack was unquestionably adopted to augment that decision.

' In defense of the regulation, the defendants asserted that any policy of granting an unlimited privilege to school children in their district for whom educational facilities were then available to be furnished transportation by the district to other districts would be disruptive of their school and its program. According to defendants, they must know in advance approximately what the enrollment is going to be for the ensuing year in order to prepare their program, employ teachers, and provide other facilities to meet the needs. Confining the situation to pupils in the seventh and eighth grades, defendants contend that if one exception is made to the regulation then other exceptions will have to be made; and considering that some 20 pupils would be involved, the result might be the district would lose what is normally described as its junior high school. Such rationale is not unlike the rationale that this court followed in State ex rel. School Dist. No. 1, Niobrara County v. School Dist. No. 12, Niobrara County, 45 Wyo. 365, 18 P.2d 1010, 1015-1016.

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