The Court of Appeals on Tuesday largely dismissed a blanket claim by an education advocacy group that Albany has been shortchanging schools statewide, but said claims could be brought by individual districts.
The majority of the court dismissed most claims brought against the state by New Yorkers for Students' Education Rights, or NYSER, an advocacy group backed by parents of schoolchildren, the state's Parent Teachers Association, and several school districts. But the judges permitted claims against Syracuse and New York City to proceed.
The lawsuit argued that the state hasn't fulfilled the requirements of a 2006 landmark case, in which the Court of Appeals ruled that the state was underfunding New York City schools and not meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a "sound, basic education" (NYLJ Sept. 9, 2016). The NYSER complaint alleged state inadequacies in funding using several districts statewide as an example.
The suit, New Yorkers for Students' Educational Rights v. State of New York, 650450/14, was consolidated with a similar suit, Aristy-Farer v. State of New York, 100274/13, which was filed on behalf of a group of parents of New York City public school students.
The 5-1 decision said that NYSER couldn't bring a claim against the state alleging that schools throughout New York have been inadequately funded.
Writing for the majority, Judge Rowan Wilson said that claims of education underfunding must be brought on a district-by-district basis and must demonstrate that students have been denied a "sound, basic education," as set forth in the 2006 Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case.
"Our CFE decisions can be understood as a way to bring a challenge under the Education Article even if the state's system overall is designed to provide a sound basic education, but such challenges must be brought on a school district level," Wilson wrote.
"Here, drawing every inference in favor of the NYSER plaintiffs, it is not possible to infer that all or even most school districts in the state fall below the constitutional floor, and plaintiffs concede that many school districts are not deficient," he added.
In September 2016, a unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, had upheld a lower court's 2014 decision that the plaintiffs had standing to charge that underfunding schools deprived students' of their rights under Article XI of the New York state Constitution.
However, Wilson wrote that "our precedent requires district-specific pleading for claims of this nature, which plaintiffs here have set forth for New York City and Syracuse only."