Court orders 35% hike in schools budget

February 18, 2005 11:56 AM

Court orders $5.6 billion per year increase in NYC schools funding.The order, being appealed by Gov. Pataki, compels a 35% increase in operating funds for NYC public schools, and an additional $9 billion for school construction, but doesn't say which taxes ought to be raised to pay for it. Supporters and opponents both agree that, if implemented, the order would have a dramatic effect. Supporters think poor black and hispanic students will get a better education; opponents are dubious about the educational benefits and certain of the disastrous effects of a massive tax increase. A second arguments concerns whether the city ought to bear some of the costs, or the state should have to bear them all.
posted by MattD (40 comments total)

Good.

The State of NY has suckled at the teat of NYC for so long while, in turn, denying badly needed funding in all areas time and time again. It's reached a nadir under Pataki (who, thankfully, will almost certainly be shown the door next year).

Sad that something like this needs to be rectified in the courts, but we need more of it.
posted by mkultra at 12:06 PM on February 18, 2005

More here.
posted by trharlan at 12:07 PM on February 18, 2005

That's freaky to think a judge can order the state to spend funds in a certain way. Isn't that what the state congress is for?
posted by mathowie at 12:14 PM on February 18, 2005

God Bless Activist Judges!
posted by cavalier at 12:16 PM on February 18, 2005

I'm curious as to whom MKultra seems to believe is undertaxed outside of the NYC. People in Westchester and Nassau who pay $22,000 a year in property tax on their 40- year-old 4 br/2.5 bath houses on 80x120 foot lots? Upstate, vast swaths of which are as poor, in average income terms, as all but the worst swaths of NYC ghettos?
posted by MattD at 12:19 PM on February 18, 2005

Matt- The base of the plaintiffs' argument is that it's a (state) constitutional issue. Article XI, Section 1 says, "The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free common schools, wherein all the children of this state may be educated." The city is (rightly, IMHO) claiming that the state's spending policies are denying poor NYC children their proper education.
posted by mkultra at 12:23 PM on February 18, 2005

MattD, it's all about volume and per-capita spending. NYC has far-and-away the highest population in the state, no matter how you slice it. What we pay in to the state kitty in taxes vs. what we get back in services is totally out of whack.
posted by mkultra at 12:26 PM on February 18, 2005

The legislature could "provide" for this by passing a law authorizing the New York City Council to raise the city income tax and property tax to whatever level was necessary to fund New York City schools.

I certainly hope that's the approach that they take. People are always much more careful spending their own money than other people's money -- if confronted with a $3000 tax increase, NYC households will think carefully about what other alternatives might improve the schools, like school choice, or greater parental responsibility.
posted by MattD at 12:29 PM on February 18, 2005

I certainly hope that's the approach that they take. People are always much more careful spending their own money than other people's money

But it sounds like at the moment NYC taxpayers are subsidizing the rest of the state. Does this little axiom about spending one's own money not also apply in reverse?
posted by Space Coyote at 12:39 PM on February 18, 2005

The legislature could "provide" for this by passing a law authorizing the New York City Council to raise the city income tax and property tax to whatever level was necessary to fund New York City schools.

Well, yeah, sure, but they're not, which is part of the problem.

Here's an interesting question- does anyone know what NYC's proportional representation in the state legislature is, vs. its proportion of the state population?
posted by mkultra at 12:46 PM on February 18, 2005

Mkultra -- NYC is overrepresented in the State Assembly by about two seats and underrepresented in the State Senate by about a seat. (This is because the Democratic majority of the Assembly draws its own lines, as does the Republican majority of the Senate.)

If the Court of Appeals upholds DeGrasse, I suspect that the suburban trend in favor of the Democrats in the State Senate, which threatens to cost the Republicans the majority in an election or two, might be halted. People move to Nassau and Westchester to escape the problems of NYC schools and won't be happy to see the courts drag them back into them by way of massive tax increases.

The real "voters" who matter in this process are well-compensated workers and their employers. Virtually none of them send their kids to NYC public schools, because they live in the suburbs or because they use private schools. At some point they just won't accept paying vastly more taxes for services that they don't receive.
posted by MattD at 1:00 PM on February 18, 2005

We've been giving and giving to the state, and not getting our proportionate share back for decades now--it's about time that changed.

If they won't accept it, they can move, MattD...and they should want and welcome better public schools in the city--it benefits their businesses, and the entire society. It's a public good that helps their bottom line as well.
posted by amberglow at 1:03 PM on February 18, 2005

My god! That's nearly 0.9394% of our defense budget! Will someone please think of the terrorists?
posted by odinsdream at 1:05 PM on February 18, 2005

What I can't stand is the constant undermining of the judiciary by the GOP & conservatives in general as shown my MattD's NY Post link. The state constitution is pretty clear on this issue, and the judge (correctly) left how to decide where the funding came from to the legislature. Which admittedly means that nothing will get done, but the judge was correct to send it back to "the people" to decide where the money came from. But there is a larger issue: NYC hasn't gotten a fair shake from the state nor the Federal government. For every tax dollar sent to the Federal government, New York gets only $.85 back in funding. Not only is NYC subsidizing the state, but also the federal government.
posted by plemeljr at 1:23 PM on February 18, 2005

I'd agree with you, amberglow, if the money was spent in a way that well-compensated workers could benefit in even some proportion to the portion of the bill they'd foot -- like complete school choice or the creation of a citywide system of exclusive test-based K-8 schools along the lines of Stuyvessant and Bronx Science for 9-12

As it is, the money appears destined to make a little less bad, maybe, schools which simply cannot serve the children of married, employed, and college-educated parents.
posted by MattD at 1:24 PM on February 18, 2005

I work for the NYC Department of Education in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and... well, needless to say, we are watching this very closely.
posted by moxyberry at 1:29 PM on February 18, 2005

And no one has mentioned the United Federation of Teachers: the union is definitely one of the biggest factors in play (and they're not afraid to tell you so.)
posted by moxyberry at 1:31 PM on February 18, 2005

MattD, if you think that the NYC public schools only serve the workingclass of this city, you're mistaken, believe me.

here's more info (a little dated tho) on disparities bet. city and the rest of the state: In 1996-97, NYC spent $8,171 per-pupil -- $1,150 less than the state average of $9,321. This gap grew by $108 from 1995-96, the second straight year it has increased. The average downstate suburb spent $12,613.
* NYC has 9.2 computers per 100 students, while the average district with low student needs has 17.5. NYC has 9 library books per student, while the average low-need district has 23.
* NYC has among the lowest teacher salaries in the state despite the area's high cost of living. NYC's median salary of $47,345 is almost $1,500 below the state average and more than $17,000 below the average paid by downstate suburban districts.
posted by amberglow at 1:38 PM on February 18, 2005

Good. The kids need it.

I think instead of fighting a budget increase for our schools, our politicians should be fighting the stuipd big-ass-stadium that the Jets want the city to pay for. That's much more of a waste of money - and what's more, if we don't build the stadium we can put that money towards the schools. It's kind of a no-brainer, but then again I'm not a politician, implying that I do have some amount of common sense.
posted by tomorama at 1:38 PM on February 18, 2005

A hugely disproportionate share of the funding for NYS schools comes from NYC taxes, and our children are getting far less per child, in older schools that are more expensive to run.

At one point a Pataki-appointed judge ruled that the state wasn't required to give the children more than an eighth grade education and they weren't even required to make sure that they had access to that.

Pataki has been buying re-election upstate with NYC taxes for a long time now. I expect he'll drag this out in court as long as he's in office (which, thanks to Mr. Spitzer, probably won't be all that much longer) but eventually our kids are going to get some funds.

About damn time.
posted by jmhm at 1:44 PM on February 18, 2005

None of the linked articles make it clear how wacky (read as: batshit insane) New York's educational system is. I read the links and I didn't read anything I haven't heard from state Dept. of Education guys a dozen times and have pounded into my head at every school board meeting.

The bottom line is that there are incredible inequities in this system. For example, my children attend a rural school in upstate NY with a totall enrollment of three (3). The annual budget is roughly 350k a year. Per student, this works out to about ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN THOUSAND dollars a kid.

It's not hard to see why they might want more money downstate.
posted by cedar at 1:45 PM on February 18, 2005

How much money does New York have to spend to comply with No Child Left Behind, you know, that underfunded federal program. Doing some quick searching, all I could find was, "New York City will receive $376 million less for the federal law this year (2003) than it was promised when the act passed."

That, and it costs the state $1 billion each year to comply with the testing. That, and the fact that the federal government actually CUT spending for the next budget even.

if confronted with a $3000 tax increase, NYC households will think carefully about what other alternatives might improve the schools, like school choice, or greater parental responsibility.

How exactly do you legislate 'greater parental responsibility'? This is the excuse the right uses all the time. 'Let's cut funding and make the parents more responsible'. That doesn't do anything, you're just cutting funding. No parent is going to say, 'well, i'm going to pick up the slack on that'. It's idiot logic. Also, on top of making the program worse, cutting funding sends a message to those using the program that they aren't worthwhile.
posted by Arch Stanton at 1:48 PM on February 18, 2005

Amberglow, there are plenty of decent public schools in the outer boroughs, serving middle class families, of this I'm well aware. They do their job with the CURRENT budget, just as Stuyvessant and Bronx Science do theirs.

This money is not intended for these schools. Nor is this money going to help create schools in Manhattan which could create satisfactory alternatives to private schools for the people who'd be paying the lion's share of the taxes (current Manhattanites and ex-Manhattanites who live in Westchester and Nassau).

This money instead will go to fund schools which are already failing because they lack a critical mass of parents with the ability or willingness to motivate, dispipline and prepare their children to function adequately in school. And it will do NOTHING to address that problem.

And this could easily be the tax increase which starts the death spiral of job losses, followed by even greater taxes on those who stay behind, followed by more job losses, which brought great cities like Philadelphia and Detroit near to ruination.
posted by MattD at 1:57 PM on February 18, 2005

Arch -- you'll get no defense of No Child Left Behind from me, which I regard as terrible in virtually every respect. Education is all about parents acquitting their resonsibilities; if the Feds should do anything (and, in the main, they shouldn't) it should be to increase the power of parents and decrease the role of bureaucrats.
posted by MattD at 2:01 PM on February 18, 2005

You're right, Matt. If the parents only had a better attitude they'd be able to keep the ceilings up by sheer force of will and stop holding classes in the gym and the cafeteria.
posted by jmhm at 2:02 PM on February 18, 2005

This money instead will go to fund schools which are already failing because they lack a critical mass of parents with the ability or willingness to motivate, dispipline and prepare their children to function adequately in school. And it will do NOTHING to address that problem.

Here's the point that you've been trying to make this entire thread. Here's the problem with that point. You can't legislate a parent to be a better, more active parent and member of society. That's just a plain fact. With that hurdle, you have to fund other items, namely schools. I also firmly believe, but have no proof for, if you make someone think that people care about them and their future, they are more willing to succeed. With that logic, I think that helping build better schools and staffing them properly will help the children to succeed.
posted by Arch Stanton at 2:03 PM on February 18, 2005

This money instead will go to fund schools which are already failing because they lack a critical mass of parents with the ability or willingness to motivate, dispipline and prepare their children to function adequately in school. And it will do NOTHING to address that problem.

Ever think that they might be failing because they don't have enough money in the first place? How is starving them of money going to change anything at all?
posted by bshort at 2:04 PM on February 18, 2005

"And this could easily be the tax increase which starts the death spiral of job losses."

That ship left port with Cuomo and his kid nearly a decade ago. Now we're playing catch up.

This message brought to you by Spitzer in '06
posted by cedar at 2:11 PM on February 18, 2005

As a former "upstater" I'd be quite happy to see NYC join New Jersey.
Hell, we'd even let you keep the Statue of Liberty.

Then we could impose a "migration fee" and maybe stop the city folk from moving even further upstate. I'm starting to miss the dairy farms.

(Only half joking)
posted by madajb at 2:43 PM on February 18, 2005

And this could easily be the tax increase which starts the death spiral of job losses, followed by even greater taxes on those who stay behind, followed by more job losses, which brought great cities like Philadelphia and Detroit near to ruination.

Philadelphia? huh. I've never been there, but my friends seem to like it. Super Bowl, man!
posted by mrgrimm at 3:11 PM on February 18, 2005

stil waiting
posted by Space Coyote at 3:25 PM on February 18, 2005

MattD, if you don't believe in govt. funding of public education at all, why post this? You know the result of this ruling will be increased funding for them, even if not as much as it should be, after Pataki gets thru with it.
posted by amberglow at 3:33 PM on February 18, 2005

This money instead will go to fund schools which are already failing because they lack a critical mass of parents with the ability or willingness to motivate, dispipline and prepare their children to function adequately in school. And it will do NOTHING to address that problem.

I think that's a total red herring. In inability or unwillingness of parents to motivate, dispipline and prepare their children to function adequately in school crosses all social strata. And I'm not going for irony here.

Have you met anyone who's gone through the NYC school system as a teacher? I know a few, and their response has been universally negative, basically because teachers are put into over-enrolled classrooms without any kind of mandate other than to teach the kids what they need to know for Regents, and no authority to enforce discipline, and no access to adequate facilities. That, to me, is a budgetary problem- schools can't afford the teachers they need to teach effectively, period. Yes, I know all about how corrupt the Teachers' Union has become, and they've certainly got their share of the problem to own up to, but c'mon- NYC public schools are mostly shitholes, and no one deserves to have that for 12 years.

And this could easily be the tax increase which starts the death spiral of job losses, followed by even greater taxes on those who stay behind, followed by more job losses, which brought great cities like Philadelphia and Detroit near to ruination.

Dunno about Detroit, but I grew up near Philly, and let me tell ya- that town went to crap because you couldn't build a building taller than William Penn's statue atop City Hall, which was, what- under 10 stories? Who wants to establish the headquarters of a billion-dollar business in that environment?
posted by mkultra at 3:40 PM on February 18, 2005

But it sounds like at the moment NYC taxpayers are subsidizing the rest of the state.

still waiting.

Consider the question asked and answered.

People in Westchester and Nassau who pay $22,000 a year in property tax on their 40- year-old 4 br/2.5 bath houses on 80x120 foot lots? Upstate, vast swaths of which are as poor, in average income terms, as all but the worst swaths of NYC ghettos?
posted by MattD at 3:19 PM EST on February 18
posted by MLIS at 4:48 PM on February 18, 2005

This may have been inevitable, but it's tragic, because pumping more $ into NYC schools is a joke because the system remains a money pit of mediocre teachers (largely), Soviet-like bureaucracy, and masses of parents who don't know how, or care to know how to be good parents.

What the system needs is a decade of administration demolition.

As for financing equity, perhaps austerity outside the City will take over as suburbanites and Upstaters refuse to fund this disgrace.

Tell me, do you think more is spent at the elite NYC public schools, or the academic basket cases?

George Pataki, you're not a Republican; you're not a pseudo-Democrat; you're just a shitty, shitty doofy politician.
posted by ParisParamus at 5:12 PM on February 18, 2005

Of course tat's a bit of a red herring since the state constitution says that adequate funding for education must be provided for, and doesn't include much about sucking up to affluent suburbanites.
posted by Space Coyote at 5:18 PM on February 18, 2005

Why should the city only spend more on schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesent? These are good schools, but a tracked system like NY has tends to concentrate quality eduation in only a few schools, which a disproportionate share of middle-class students get to attend, rather than ensuring that all the students have adequate resources for success.

Why should the needs of middle-class families come first, just because they have more clout and pay more taxes? The government isn't about only paying for services that will benefit your own family personally - public education is the epitome of a common good.

I hope NYC schools do get more money. They may not spend it perfectly efficiently, but heaven knows more money might allow better teacher training and more individualized attention for kids who need it, not to mention enriching the curriculum for all the kids.
posted by mai at 7:46 PM on February 18, 2005

for the same reason that Matt's "good outer borough schools" are good outer borough schools. Because the parents are more affluent and have more political influence, better educations and more savvy in gaming the system than the parents of the children in poorer neighborhoods.

The head of our PTA is a SAHM with a doctorate. We have a volunteer who spends a few hours a week applying for educational grants. We throw big parties for the kids and sell pizza to pay for soap and toilet paper for the kids' bathrooms so the school can afford to maintain the computers and the magnet program. Our Community Organization lobbied until they got an extension put on the school a few years ago. The windows aren't broken and the radiators work. We raised enough to hire one of the teachers and one of the classroom aides to run a reasonably priced after school program.

We're not a particularly affluent community by New York standards, just middle class with a few pockets less aflluent than that and with a much higher than average ESL number, but there are enough parents not working two or three jobs that we can afford to put time into our kids' schools and enough who are frankly privileged that they can afford to make it a full time job.

Does the kid in one of those lousy schools whose mom is working two jobs at the minimum wage have the same shot at Stuyvesant or Hunter? Hell no.

If you look at it as if the only person who's disadvantaged by that is that kid, you haven't been following the Social Security debate too closely.

I'm still waiting to find out how funding better public schools in New York is going to drive people to the suburbs. Our billionaire mayor doesn't seem to think so. He just offered Shelly Silver a nice shiny new school in the financial district.
posted by jmhm at 9:13 PM on February 18, 2005

When was the last time we had a mayor who actually sent their kids to Public Schools? Bloomberg didn't, Rudy didn't....
posted by amberglow at 9:22 PM on February 18, 2005

Most of the middle class doesn't live in NYC. Why is it a surprise, anyway, that it has lousy schools. And how is it that the schools used to produce better students? It's the students and their families; not the schools, per se.

This won't drive people to the burbs; it will drive them to other states.
posted by ParisParamus at 2:21 PM on February 19, 2005