                                                              
| 2003 - Campaign for Fiscal Equity Wins Case |
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| Written by Maryellen Rogusky |
| Thursday, 05 January 2006 02:20 |
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NYC School System Is Failing Kids, Says State's Highest Court POSTED: 9:41 a.m. EDT June 26, 2003 UPDATED: 12:46 p.m. EDT June 26, 2003 ALBANY, N.Y. -- New York City is not adequately educating its 1.1 million children, the state's highest court said Thursday in a ruling with wide-ranging implications for districts throughout the state. The Court of Appeals decided 4-1 that the city and the state have to do more to ensure that New York City students get a "sound basic education" as provided for under the state constitution. "Tens of thousands of students are placed in overcrowded classrooms, taught by unqualified teachers and provided with inadequate facilities and equipment," Chief Judge Judith Kaye wrote for the court. "The number of children in these straits is large enough to represent a systemic failure." The court gave the state until July 30, 2004, to come up with a plan of how to provide a "sound basic education" to New York City school children. Kaye said the majority of the court was declining to be very specific about what the elements of such a plan would be because that is not the proper function of the judiciary. "We have neither the authority, nor the ability, nor the will, to micromanage education funding," she wrote. Judge George Bundy Smith, in a concurring ruling, said he would specify a minimum academic Standard for New York City school children. He wrote that a plan adopted by the state Board of Regents in 1996 to require students to pass Regents' examinations in five subjects in order to graduate from high school would be a proper floor for student achievement. The dissenting judge, Susan Phillips Read, said her colleagues were casting the court in the "role of judicial overseer" of the Legislature. She predicted that the continued court involvement will mean "another long trial followed by lengthy appeals" after a new funding system is devised. The ruling is "virtually guaranteed to spawn similar lawsuits throughout this state," Read said, and that the decision "signals the demise of local control" over schools. "The majority has allowed its deep sympathy for education excellence to overwhelm its sense of the proper and practical limits of the judicial function," Read said. While Kaye wrote that the court's ruling applied only to funding New York City schools, she said nothing prevents the Legislature and governor from changing funding for schools elsewhere in the state. She suggested that it would be difficult to make significant changes for New York City schools without affecting other schools. Kaye was joined in her ruling by Judges Albert Rosenblatt and Carmen Ciparick Beauchamp. The court is down a member with the resignation of Richard Wesley, who is now a federal judge. Judge Victoria Graffeo took no part in Thursday's ruling. Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat and speaker of the state Assembly, called the ruling a "great victory" for New York City students. "It recognizes the Special Needs, it recognizes the high costs associated with doing business in the city and says, `These children are entitled to an education that's comparable to other children in the state,"' Silver said. The long-standing case has been carried by the Campaign for Fiscal equity (CFE), a New York City-based coalition involving teacher unions, parents, civic and minority groups and others. In 1995, the Court of Appeals gave legal standing to the CFE's challenge and the case went to trial starting in 1999. On Jan. 10, 2001, state Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse stunned Albany Policy-makers by ruling that the state's education funding system shortchanges the mostly minority population of schools in New York City and other urban districts. DeGrasse called on the Legislature and Gov. George Pataki to make changes, at an estimated cost of at least $1 billion, to correct problems he highlighted in his ruling. The state contributes about $14 billion a year toward public school education. Instead, Pataki sued. The governor said the school funding system is far from perfect, and he has proposed changes in recent years. But Pataki argued that a matter as important as the education aid system should be decided by the governor and state legislators, not a trial-level judge. The midlevel Appellate Division of state Supreme Court overturned DeGrasse's ruling on June 25, 2002. The judges said DeGrasse had interpreted the meaning too broadly, as defined by the Court of Appeals, of what constituted a "sound basic education" for school children. Pataki on Thursday said he has long recognized the need to change the state school aid formulas. "This is a historic opportunity," he said following the ruling. Pataki's Democratic opponents unsuccessfully tried to use the governor's appeal of DeGrasse's CFE ruling against him during his re-election campaign in 2002. They charged that he was supporting a system that guaranteed children only an eighth-grade education, a contention Pataki denied. Before Thursday's ruling, the state Court of Appeals had not ruled on the overall fairness of the state's school funding system since 1982. Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. |