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Jamestown, Small City Schools Win Suit Appeal

New York state is being directed by an appeals court judges to spend more money on education in eight small city school districts, including Jamestown.

On Thursday, the Appellate Division Third Department ruled in a 52-page opinion that a trial court judge had erred in dismissing the claims made by the eight small city school districts: Jamestown, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie and Utica. The Appellate Division held that the State of New York violated the requirement of the state Constitution to provide the students in eight small city school districts with a sound basic education and sent the case back to the state Supreme Court, where the state will craft a response subject to judicial review.

During oral arguments in February, the state Attorney General’s office argued school districts are not required to provide smaller class sizes, Academic Intervention Services and anything more than limited services for English Language Learners and social workers for at-risk students.

The appellate court justices rejected that argument, saying the eight school districts have high populations of at-risk students who come from impoverished backgrounds, have disabilities or who speak primary languages other than English and need additional services that the districts could not afford.

“The compelling evidence demonstrated that, in order to place a sound basic education within the reach of such students, they require early interventions, more time on task and other supplemental programming, as well as support from adequate numbers of guidance counselors, social workers or other similar professionals,” the appellate court wrote in its decision. “Despite these enhanced needs, the districts lacked a combined total of over $1.1 billion in funding slated to be issued under Foundation Aid, necessitating further cuts to already diminished staff and essential services. Most unfortunately, the performance of the students in these districts suffered as a result.”

In regards to Jamestown, the Appellate Court ruled that budget constraints did not allow Jamestown to hire enough social workers, recommending a student ration of one social worker for every 250 students for general education students and one social worker for every 50 children with higher needs. During the time when the Small Cities case was being tried, Jamestown had no social workers employed after eliminating 80 teaching positions in the years leading up to the 2010-11 school year.

Appellate judges also agreed with Jamestown’s argument that it needs more money for additional guidance counselors and Academic Intervention Services, which Jamestown was offering only in reading at the expense of additional help in English language arts, math science and social studies. Experts said the district needed at least 10 more AIS teachers districtwide in the 2013-14 school year.

“These deficiencies are particularly concerning when considering that, in the 2013-2014 academic year, only 13% of economically disadvantaged students in grades 3 through 8 scored at proficient levels on their state ELA assessments and only 15% of such students scored proficiently in math,” the judges wrote. “A significant percentage of students, including half of the grade 9 students who required AIS, were not receiving intervention due to a lack of staff.”

The Small Cities Court Case is currently in its 13th year and has been revived by appellate courts three times. It centers around the state’s delay in fully implementing Foundation Aid to schools, which was the state’s response to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, originally filed in 1993 and decided in favor of New York City schools in 2006. In 2007, Gov. Eliot Spitzer unveiled the Foundation Aid formula that was supposed to meet the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision. When the economy went into a recession after the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 and 2009, state lawmakers cut education aid because the state didn’t have the money to fully fund the Foundation Aid formula.

Jamestown was due to have received $109.3 million in the years the Gap Elimination Adjustment, the state’s mechanism for cutting education aid after the recession, was in place.

“As for causation, defendant maintained that the poor student outcomes stemmed from administrative mismanagement, not a lack of resources,” the judges wrote. “We are unconvinced, and, as explained previously, the Court of Appeals has already rejected mismanagement as a viable defense. … In light of the foregoing, plaintiffs have demonstrated the requisite causal link and, accordingly, a constitutional violation with respect to the at-risk students in Jamestown during the period under review.”

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