“Tick, Tick, Tick...”
by
Assemblyman Steven Sanders
The clock is ticking. With scarcely two months
to go before the Court-imposed deadline for an agreement to
be reached by the Legislature and the Governor to implement
a remedy in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case, little
progress has been made in Albany.
The next several weeks
will be crucial in determining whether a resolution to this
issue will be reached in Albany, or whether the courts will
take over and impose a remedy. What’s
the holdup? Very simply put, the Governor and the State Senate
leadership continue to refuse to accept the findings of the
State Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals, which ruled,
after ten long years of litigation, that the New York City
school district was unconstitutionally under-funded. The Governor
continues to argue—even against the recommendation of
this own Commission (!) and findings of several other respected “costing
out” studies—that New York City needs very little
new education resources. He does this with a straight face,
notwithstanding our grossly overcrowded classrooms, a high
percentage of uncertified teachers, near ancient school facilities,
and decades-old technology.
The State Senate maintains
that New York City and other “high needs” school districts must continue
to compete with wealthy school districts for scarce new resources
without any significant change in the unfair way in which education
dollars have been distributed in Albany for generations. The
Assembly has tried to convince the Governor and the State Senate
that business as usual will neither satisfy the Court decision,
nor will it provide the necessary sound basic education to
New York City students and other children in high needs school
districts around the State. Also, notwithstanding that the
CFE decision applies only to New York City, the Assembly has
pushed from the start for addressing the needs of all of the
700-plus districts in the State—not only the New York
City district. A court-imposed remedy will not do that.
We in the Assembly
continue to argue that the Legislature and the Governor must
come to a decision before July 30 and in doing so increase
educational resources by at least the amount recommended
by the New York State Board of Regents, which declared that
a minimum of $6 billion was necessary over the next seven
years on a statewide basis. Other reputable studies have
pegged a number to be in excess of $10 billion.
An agreement between the Legislature and Governor
Pataki is attainable, but only once all parties acknowledge
that the court decision in this issue is final and binding,
that it is now incumbent on our branches of government to arrive
at a funding reform that will adequately invest in public education
for the sake of our State’s future. We must do this not
just because the court has ordered it, but also because it
is profoundly in our interest to insure that all children in
New York State public schools receive the quality education
needed to compete in the 21st Century.
The clock is ticking.#
Assemblyman
Sanders is chairman of the Education Committee. E-mail
him at sanders@assembly.state.ny.us or phone 212.979.9696.
His mailing address is 201 East 16th Street, New York,
NY 10003.
