new yorkers for smaller classes

Timeline

November 21, 2006: The State Court of Appeals issues its final ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, awarding New York City an extra $1.93 billion a year, minimum, to achieve a sound basic education for every public school student. The Court rejects the higher range of $4 to $6 billion that was recommended by a special panel, but Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer vows to spend more than the minimum anyway.

September 6, 2006: State Appellate Division hears arguments by New Yorkers for Smaller Classes and City attorneys on whether a class size amendment to the City Charter should be put to the voters. The case now involves significant questions about the meaning and intent of 2002 state legislation that gave the NYC mayor control of the school system.

September 5, 2006: The opening day of school, New Yorkers for Smaller Classes is joined by attorney general candidate Andrew Cuomo, lieutenant governor candidate David Paterson, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other notables for a press conference calling for reduced class sizes and a speedy settlement of the CFE lawsuit.

May 19, 2006: State Supreme Court Justice Lewis Bart Stone ruled against New Yorkers for Smaller Classes, in its effort to put a referendum on class size on the November 2006 ballot.  According to the ruling New York City voters do not have the right under state law to force Mayor Bloomberg to allocate 25 percent of any money from a Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement to reduce class size because “education is a state responsibility and function under the [state] constitution.”

April 26, 2006: New Yorkers for Smaller Classes appeared before State Supreme Court Justice Lewis Stone in Manhattan to argue that a class-size amendment should be put before the voters in November. On the other side, the Corporation Counsel, the city’s law department, argued that voters should not have any say in educational policy.

Click here to read the main brief
Click here to read a brief by interveners Hispanic Federation and Robert Jackson
Click here to read a letter to the judge from the Educational Priorities Panel
Click here to read the Citizens Union amicus brief
Click here to read an amicus brief by Class Size Matters, NAACP, AQE, CPAC and other parent groups
Click here to read the City’s reply brief

March 26, 2006:  The Appellate Division, First Department rules in favor of CFE ordering the legislature to provide New York City schools $4.7 to $5.63 billion in operating aid and $9.2 billion in capital funding by April 1, 2006.

March 16, 2006:  The New York State Comptroller found in an audit that for the 2004-2005 school year the NYC Department of Education provided 1,566 fewer early grade classes than should have been provided under the law, based on the class size reduction funding received by the City. Alan Hevesi, the State Comptroller said, “State funding for the Early Grade Class Size Reduction Program came with very specific rules about how it could be spent, and we found that the City Department of Education did not meet the mandatory goals.”

February 14, 2005: Justice Leland DeGrasse affirmed the referee’s recommendations, concluding that New York City schools need an additional $5.63 billion in operating aid and $9.2 billion for facilities to provide their students their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education.

September 8, 2005: In order to satisfy the legal requirement that an additional 15,000 valid signatures be submitted by early September for voters to place a proposed charter amendment on the ballot, New Yorkers for Smaller Classes submit an additional 35,000 signatures on petitions to the City Clerk in a continuation of its bid to force the city to reduce class sizes to levels comparable to those found in the rest of New York State.

August 4, 2005: The City Clerk certified that petitions submitted by New Yorkers for Smaller Classes contained a sufficient number of valid signatures, but the Corporation Counsel, in a letter to the City Clerk, wrote that the proposed amendment was legally “invalid” and not appropriate to appear on the ballot this November or at any future date. The coalition immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the Corporation Counsel’s ruling.

July 8, 2005: New Yorkers for Smaller Classes presented the City Clerk’s office with petitions containing over 70,000 signatures –  more than twice the number needed – calling for a change to the City Charter to require smaller class sizes in New York City public schools.

May 4, 2005: New Yorkers for Smaller Class Sizes launched a petition drive to change the City Charter to require that at least 25% of money from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case be spent to reduce the size of public school classes.

November 30, 2004: In their final report, a panel of judicial referees, appointed by Justice DeGrasse to develop remedies in the CFE case, recommended sweeping reforms to the education funding system. The panel concluded that New York City schools need an additional $5.63 billion in operating aid and $9.2 billion for facilities to provide students their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education.

September 2004: New Yorkers for Smaller Classes filed an amicus brief with the Special Masters in the CFE case. The coalition urged the Masters, who were charged with deciding how much money the city was owed, to include sufficient funds for class size reduction in its findings.

September 2004: The UFT filed more than 11,000 grievances for classes that exceeded limits of 34 in a class. More than 10,000 of those classes were in high schools.

June 2003: New Yorkers for Smaller Classes filed petitions with the City Clerk with signatures from more than 114,000 voters. The petitions called for the creation of a Charter Revision Commission that would consider and propose legal limits to the size of public school classes. 45,000 valid signatures of registered voters were required to place the issue on the ballot. The petition sought to create a commission to study class size.  The Commission would make recommendations for amendments to the Charter that would be voted on by the public in a general election.

June 26, 2003:  The New York State Court of Appeals, in its landmark opinion supporting the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, accepted the Campaign’s evidence that NYC classes are too large, and said that reducing class size is an essential ingredient in achieving a sound, basic education for all New York City children. In the 4-1 decision, the Court of Appeals overturned the Appellate Division ruling and found in favor of CFE. The Court rejected the 8th grade standard, noting that a "high school education is now all but indispensable" to prepare students for employment and civic engagement.

June 25, 2002: The Appellate Division, First Department of the State Supreme Court, reversed the DeGrasse order. The Appellate Court held that the state constitution only guarantees that schools provide the opportunity to learn at an 8th or 9th grade skill level and found that the current funding system sufficiently allowed for this.

January 10, 2001: State Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse issued a detailed decision carefully analyzing the evidence gathered during the 7-month trial and found that the current state school funding system was unconstitutional. Governor Pataki appealed the decision.

In 1993, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a not-for-profit group of pro-bono attorneys and education advocates, filed a constitutional challenge to the state school funding system. The lawsuit, Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc. v. State of New York claimed that the state's school finance system underfunded New York City public schools and denied its students their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education.