Court: State Must Pay $1.93 Billion a Year More For NYC Schools
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – New York’s highest court on Monday ordered the state to pay an additional $1.93 billion a year to provide “a sound, basic education” to New York City school children. That’s billions less than had been sought in a landmark lawsuit launched more than a decade ago.
The state had argued that $1.93 billion was the minimum needed to improve the schools, an amount at the low end of funding recommended by Gov. Pataki’s education reform commission to settle a 1993 lawsuit filed by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.
The state Court of Appeals, in a 4-2 decision, set the minimum to be spent, but said the Legislature should be allowed to determine the final total. The Pataki administration had argued that decisions on how to spend public money are the responsibility of the executive and legislative branches, not the courts.
“In fashioning specific remedies for constitutional violations, we must avoid intrusion on the primary domain of another branch of government,” Justice Eugene Pigott wrote for the majority.
Attorney General Spitzer, the governor-elect, argued the case for the Pataki administration. During the campaign for governor, Mr. Spitzer said he expected the state would have to pay $4 billion to $6 billion a year more to satisfy the CFE judgment. And he said the state would have to pay more – probably more than $1 billion – to correct the same problems with inadequate resources and building space in other high-need school districts statewide.
In 2004, a state Appellate Division panel in Manhattan recommended that the state spend $14.1 billion more on the nation’s largest school system over the next four years. The panel also said the state should provide $9.2 billion more for capital improvements from 2005 through 2010.
In the current fiscal year, Mr. Pataki and the Legislature struck a deal to provide about $10 billion in capital funds over several years.
The New York City public schools have a $14.5 billion annual operating budget, roughly $6 billion of which comes from state funds. The school system has about 1.1 million students.
