Jamestown school funding lawsuit continues Tuesday
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New York state says it is fully funding the Foundation Aid formula for schools and meeting a state court decision requiring additional aid to eight small city school districts – including Jamestown.
The school districts disagree. On Tuesday, the small city school funding lawsuit will be back in the Third Department Appellate Division Court of Appeals for oral argument as the court decides whether or not the state is meeting its state constitutional requirement to provide students with a "sound basic education." The lawsuit is in its 18th year and includes small city school districts in Jamestown, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie, and Utica as plaintiffs.
"This is not simply a dispute over an aid formula or a line item in the State budget," said Robert J. Breidenstein, executive director of the New York State Association of Small City School Districts."It is about whether students will have access to the educators, counselors, social workers, academic interventions, extended-learning opportunities, and safe, effective learning environments they need to succeed."
In its 2021 decision, the Third Department unanimously held that the State had violated the Education Article with respect to at-risk students in each of the Maisto districts. The court's analysis recognized that meaningful educational opportunity requires more than a nominal funding commitment. It depends on adequate instructional, social, health, and family-support resources, as well as the ability to deliver early and intensive academic intervention and extended learning opportunities.
The case is now in its remedy phase, with a state Supreme Court justice ruling that the state had met its obligation to provide funding for a sound basic education. Attorneys for the small city school districts argue that while the lawsuits have pressed the state to fully fund foundation aid, plaintiffs in the Maisto case said that as of 2023, full funding falls short by an estimated $192 million for students in the eight districts.
Attorneys for the small city school districts say the state still hasn’t met the Third Department Appellate Division’s requirement to fully fund schools because the statewide Foundation Aid plan was supposed to be fully enacted within four years, with the base amount to then be recomputed every three years based on the per pupil spending by the lower half of schools found to be successful. Foundation Aid was fully funded in 2024-25 – or 17 years later than initially planned – and hasn’t been recomputed for the last 10 years. They argue that not using the actual per-pupil spending by “successful schools” to determine Foundation Aid and the delay in funding mean school aid funding is no longer based on the model formula found rational by the Appellate Division. At the same time, plaintiffs argue that the funding issues continued pased the 2013-14 school year through 2023-24 because the small city school districts have higher than average poverty levels, lower than average wealth and state aid increases, at best, kept up with inflation.
“It is submitted the time is now to hold the State has failed to address the constitutional violations found by this court, issue a declaration that the at-risk students at the Maisto school districts for the years 2014-2015 through 2023-2024 have been denied their right pursuant to Article XI (1) of the State’s Constitution to receive a sound basic education, direct the state to analyze and determine the funding required to provide said at-risk students a sound basic education and direct the state to implement a plan to provide the funding necessary to meet their constitutional obligations," attorney David Kunz of DeGreff, Foy & Kunz argued in an April court filing.
Jonathan Hitsous, a state deputy attorney general arguing the case on behalf of the state, argued in his most recent brief that the state has remedied the constitutional violations found by the Appellate Division Third Department from 2006-07 through 2013-14 by finding the actual cost to provide a sound basic education to the at-risk school districts in the eight cities, reformed funding formulas to meet those funding levels and ensured the reforms included a “system of accountability” to measure their effect. Hitsous said the Foundation Aid formula is anchored to the lower-spending half of New York’s successful schools, consistent with an approach the Court of Appeals reviewed and found reasonable. That baseline is then adjusted based on data specific to each school district, while the Foundation Aid formula also includes a Pupils Needs Index that increases funding based on factors that include student poverty, non-English speaking students and number of students with disabilities. The state also accounts for a school district’s wealth when it calculates the anticipated local contribution.
“By awarding unprecedented funding increases to all of plaintiffs' school districts in accordance with a formula that ties funding to the needs of at-risk students, the State rationally addressed the Education Article violations that this Court identified in 2021,” Hitsous argued. “And because the record demonstrates that the State reviews its funding scheme on an ongoing basis to ensure that it produces the maximum effect, continuing judicial intervention is unnecessary. Accordingly, Supreme Court appropriately concluded that the state's remedy was rational, and entered
final judgment bringing the case to its proper end.”