A Queens mother fed up with the state’s failure to comply with a court’s ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case filed papers with the state’s highest court yesterday asking for what would amount to a voucher to send her children to private school.

Diane Payne said that until Albany allocates the billions of additional dollars to city schools ordered by the courts, she wants to be given the $13,000 a year that currently is spent on each city school student for each of her children so they can attend local private schools.

“They deserve to get the best education they possibly can,” Ms. Payne said. “Maybe someday the government will live up to its responsibility, but that won’t help my children.”

The daughter of a housekeeper from Harlem, Ms. Payne attended the highly regarded Trinity School on the Upper West Side after her mother’s employer, a stockbroker, agreed to pay the tuition. She is raising five adopted foster children and said she is unable to send them all to private school on a fixed income; she is a retired corrections officer.

Ms. Payne’s oldest children were 3 when the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case was filed with the state more than 12 years ago.

She said she is not satisfied with the schooling her two youngest children are receiving. She spends about $6,000 a year to send each of her two eldest children to Christ the King High School in Middle Village, Queens.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit group the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan, Leland DeGrasse, ruled that the state was shortchanging city students out of a sound basic education guaranteed under the state constitution.

A court-ordered panel determined that Albany should funnel an additional $5.6 billion a year to city schools. Governor Pataki is appealing that decision and came under fire this week for not applying the $2 billion budget surplus toward complying with the suit.

Mr. Pataki in his budget also proposed a $500 tax credit for families in underperforming school districts. The proposal is viewed a less-controversial version of a school voucher, similar to what Ms. Payne is seeking.

“The governor is committed to continuing to work to enact a comprehensive education reform package, that will provide our schools with the support they need, while including real reforms to improve accountability and promote higher standards that truly provide our children with the first class education they deserve,” a spokesman for Mr. Pataki, Scott Reif, said.

Ms. Payne filed the affidavit with Justice DeGrasse yesterday and then hosted a news conference on the steps of Tweed Courthouse.

The Bloomberg administration, which also is calling on the governor to abide by the court ruling, criticized Ms. Payne.

“The suit has no merit and it’s obvious grandstanding, but we can’t comment any further because it’s pending litigation,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, Kelly Devers, said.

The lead attorney for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Michael Rebell, said he was reviewing the papers.

“This really illustrates the serious harm that’s being visited on thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of children in the school system,” he said. Mr. Rebell added that the chances are slim that the courts will actually take up the case, and he said Ms. Payne would have a “long road to hoe.”

Ms. Payne, the president of the Parent Teacher Association at P.S. 134 in Queens, got the idea to ask for the $13,000 for each child when she met her attorney, Eric Grannis, at a school meeting in Queens. Mr. Grannis founded two charter schools in the city and is married to the executive director of the Harlem Success Charter School, Eva Moskowitz. Until this month, Ms. Moskowitz served as the chairwoman of City Council’s Committee on Education.