ALBANY – Taxpayers must plow tens of billions of dollars more into the New York City public schools over the next several years to provide the “sound, basic education” mandated by the state constitution, a court-appointed panel recommended yesterday.

The panel called for increasing the city schools’ operating budget gradually until it has risen by $5.63 billion a year, or 45%, in 2008-09. That’s slightly more than the amount requested by either the plaintiffs in the lawsuit or Mayor Bloomberg, and almost three times the $1.93 billion proposed by Governor Pataki. The total increase in operating funds would amount to $14.1 billion over four years.

The panel also recommended investing $9.2 billion over the next five years in construction and renovation of school buildings.

The report said nothing about where Albany should come up with the extra money, except to warn that lawmakers should not require the city to pick up too much of the cost.

The judge overseeing the case, Leland DeGrasse of the state Supreme Court at Manhattan, is expected to use the report as the basis for a court order he will issue to state lawmakers in the next few weeks. Noting that the litigation has already lasted 11 years, the panel said Mr. Pataki and the Legislature should be required to comply with its recommendations within 90 days.

The report follows through on a ruling last year by the state’s highest court. The Court of Appeals found that the city schools, with their high dropout rates and low test scores, were not meeting the minimum standard prescribed by the constitution.

Supporters of the lawsuit, brought by a coalition of education activists, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, said a big infusion of funds is necessary to deliver a decent education to all of New York City’s 1.1 million school children. The Bloomberg administration, which has made improving the schools its top priority, has already laid out aggressive plans to hire better teachers, reduce class sizes, renovate decrepit classrooms, and buy up-to-date textbooks and equipment.

Critics of the lawsuit contend that the state and the city cannot afford such a sharp increase in spending. They say more money won’t do much to improve the city schools without substantial changes in management. And they argue that education policy should be set by elected legislators, not judges.

The Court of Appeals, however, came down firmly on the side of those who see a need for substantially more money. The panel of “referees” appointed by Judge DeGrasse – two retired judges, Leo Milonas and William Thompson, and a former law school dean, John Feerick – echoed that sentiment.

“While money is surely not all that matters, there is a direct, and strong, correlation between adequate funding and the ability of a local school district to fulfill its education mandate,” the referees wrote in their report yesterday.

Although the Court of Appeals asked lawmakers to come up with a new system of accountability to ensure the money would be well spent, the panel reported that reforms already put in place by city, state, and federal officials were adequate. They specifically rejected Mr. Pataki’s proposal to create a new office of educational accountability with enhanced power to shut failing schools.

The governor, who has the option of appealing the pending order from Judge DeGrasse, expressed dismay at the panel’s findings.

“We are particularly concerned that the recommendations appear to reject any type of real reform and fail to overhaul the current accountability system, while recommending a substantial infusion of new spending,” Mr. Pataki’s spokesman, Kevin Quinn, said.

An aide to the governor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it is premature to say whether Mr. Pataki will fight the recommendations in court, since no order has been issued.

“We would expect at the end of the day he would protect the ability of elected officials to make these decisions, not the courts,” the aide said.

In its ruling of June 2003, the high court had given state lawmakers until July 30 of this year to come up with a compliance plan. But the Republican governor, the Democrat-led Assembly, and the Republican-led Senate were unable to reach a compromise by the deadline. The stalemate helped delay the overall state budget until August 11, more than four months after the start of the fiscal year – setting a new record in a 20-year late streak.

Even with a court order, the issue is likely to snarl the Capitol against this year. New York City lawmakers will push for early compliance with the court order, many upstate legislators will demand similar consideration for their schools, and Mr. Pataki will resist the tax increases that such spending increases would require.

A fiscal analyst with the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, said legislators could approve Mr. Pataki’s plan to raise $2 billion a year with more slot machinelike video-lottery terminals and would still need $3.6 billion for the city schools alone – the equivalent of a 15% increase in the state income tax.

“This has to be fought tenaciously every step of the way,” Mr. McMahon said. “This is based on myth. The myth is you dump more money on the schools, make no change in the work rules of the teachers’ contract, and it’s going to produce great results. That has never worked anywhere at any time.”

The speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, welcomed the recommendations and called for a summit of legislative leaders, the governor, the state Board of Regents, and the mayor to decide how to increase education funds, not just for New York City, but for public schools statewide.

“The time for talk and legal squabbling must end,” Mr. Silver said.

The chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Stephen Saland, a Poughkeepsie Republican, called the spending recommendations unrealistic, given the multibillion-dollar deficit facing the state.

“We don’t have the ability to go down the basement of the Capitol and print money,” he said.

“My concern remains that we may be going down that slippery slope that has snared New Jersey now for over 30 years, where the courts have effectively taken over control of New Jersey’s education system,” Mr. Saland said. “I would certainly hope that whatever our differences have been in this past year that we can rise above that, and both houses of the Legislature and the governor can come up with a statewide plan.”

Mr. Bloomberg said he was gratified by the report’s favorable comments about the reform plans that he and Chancellor Joel Klein have developed, and he warned against further regulatory mandates from Albany. He also argued that all of the new money should come from the state’s coffers, noting that the city faces a projected deficit of $3 billion in the next fiscal year.

“For the city to fund even a portion of this $5.63 billion would require us to cut after-school programs, close libraries, and make severe cuts to essential city services, even in the area of public safety,” the mayor said. “Such actions would harm the very children this lawsuit is designed to help.”

The president of the Partnership for New York City, Kathryn Wylde, agreed that Albany should provide the “preponderance” of the additional education aid.

“We are only going to continue as the state’s economic engine and largest source of revenues if we can turn around the public-education system,” she said. “If we fail to reform public education … the whole state economy is going to fail.”

She acknowledged that the state, which faces a deficit of $6 billion, will also have a hard time coming up with the extra money. She said it should be able to direct more money to the city by reallocating funds going to wealthier districts elsewhere in the state.

“It is clear there will have to be consideration of new revenues dedicated to education,” Ms. Wylde added.

The director and chief counsel of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Michael Rebell, said his group will urge lawmakers to improve financing for needy schools statewide – an effort he said would cost a total of $8.5 billion a year. He acknowledged the city would receive the lion’s share of additional money, violating a tradition of distributing education aid to different areas of the state – the city, upstate, and Long Island – according to their portions of the overall student population.

“One of the whole purposes of this constitutional ruling is to get out from under that whole ‘shares’ approach,” Mr. Rebell said. “We should not be looking backwards to what kinds of political deals have been made over the last few decades. We should be looking forward to what’s needed based on accurate costing-out analyses.”

His co-counsel in the lawsuit, Joseph Wayland of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, said any appeals Mr. Pataki lodges are unlikely to take long, meaning lawmakers should prepare to resolve the issue during the next legislative session or face fines or other penalties from the courts.

Even now, Mr. Wayland said, lawmakers are in violation of an order of the Court of Appeals. “The panel made clear that a politically driven stalemate would not be an excuse for a failure to come up with the money,” he said.