Editorials

Time for a positive CFE decision

Oct 19, 2006 1:56 PM

Where were you 13 years ago? It was just the start of Bill Clinton’s presidency, “Shindler’s List” was the most talked-about movie and the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Philadelphia Phillies four games to two in the World Series. A fair percentage of today’s teaching corps was still in middle school — and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity filed a lawsuit charging that New York City schools were so underfunded that it violated the state constitution.

Much has changed in these last 13 years but the CFE lawsuit has remained something of a constant in our lives. It was won in court by the plaintiffs, was appealed, was reversed, was re-reversed, was appealed some more — and went on and on. During that time, more than 220,000 students have dropped out of school, a million or so have graduated, the city has had three mayors and five school chancellors … and, finally, the end of the road is in sight. Last week the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, heard what should be the final arguments in the case to decide how much the state (and the city) need to pay so that the city’s children can receive the quality of education to which they are entitled.

The courts have already decided the basic issue — though that in itself took years of courtroom battles — that New York City schools have been shortchanged by the state education funding formula. What is now left for the Court of Appeals is to finalize a minimum dollar amount. The UFT has been urging that a quarter of whatever that amount turns out to be should be devoted to lower class size.

This long journey started in May 1993 when CFE, a coalition of parents, community groups and public education advocates — encouraged and supported by the UFT — filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of New York State’s education funding system.

Along the way, UFT President Randi Weingarten was a key witness during the initial trial, one that resulted in a truly historic verdict. Justice Leland DeGrasse ruled in favor of CFE, declaring the state’s school funding system unconstitutional. Therefore, he said, the schools “have broken a covenant with students and with society.” He ordered the state to reform the school funding system to make it predictable, transparent and aligned to student need. His landmark decision proclaimed that “demography is not destiny.” Weingarten called the decision “transcendent.”

For those of you who may have been preoccupied watching “Shindler’s List” or the Blue Jays over the years, we present a “roadmap” of the twists and turns, the high — and low — points in this historic tale, on pages 18 and 19.

Last week, on Oct. 10, because the governor and Albany legislators have failed to agree both on how and on how much to increase funding for the city’s schools, CFE went back to the Court of Appeals. This time it asked the court to issue a clear and enforceable order directing lawmakers to comply with the appellate court’s order to provide New York City schools with additional funds. And it asked the court to make a definitive ruling that the courts can, indeed, compel the governor and the Legislature to appropriate a specific amount of money.

Given the Court of Appeals’ previous decisions in favor of CFE, the city, the school system, the UFT and public school advocates all over the state are hopeful of a positive outcome. But, as anyone who sat through the arguments last week saw, the court has changed and only time will tell,

Whatever is the case, this will be a final outcome. Thirteen years is a school career from kindergarten through high school. Thirteen years is how long Prohibition lasted. Thirteen years to conclude the CFE case is long enough!