Opinion ID: 2078305
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Education Article Litigation

Text: In 1974, the same year the Regents revised their policy statement on segregation so as to `dilute[] [its] pro-desegregation force' ( id. ), Board of Educ., Levittown Union Free School Dist. v Nyquist (57 NY2d 27 [1982]) was commenced in Supreme Court, Nassau County. The plaintiffs consisted of the boards of education of 27 districts and 12 elementary and high school students, later joined by the boards of the four largest cities, New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, and 12 other city school children. Plaintiffs alleged a violation of the Education Article and the Equal Protection Clauses of the State and Federal Constitutions. Justice L. Kingsley Smith, after an eight-month trial, ruled in plaintiffs' favor on all grounds. Plaintiffs' complaint centered on the wide disparities in funding among the State's 700 school districts based on a financing system that relied largely on local property taxes except in the large cities, which were fiscally dependent and had many noneducational expenses. Plaintiffs also claimed that the scheme established by the Legislature denies to some children, based on the lesser real property wealth of their school districts, the means to participate meaningfully as citizens and to function successfully in the labor market (94 Misc 2d 466, 478 [1978]). The cities specifically claimed that they were treated as property-wealthy by the State's formula that did not take into account the costs of providing municipal services that other areas of the state did not provide. The cities also argued that the State's formula undertook, but failed, to provide additional resources to school districts with high need students. For the noncity plaintiffs, the court applied an intermediate level of scrutiny and found a violation of the Equal Protection Clauses. The court also found that the funding scheme did not satisfy the Education Article's requirement that the Legislature maintain and support a system of free common schools (94 Misc 2d at 528). As to the cities, the court found that the formula lacked a rational basis. With respect to the Education Article, the court found that [b]y providing reduced aid per pupil and reduced supplemental aid per special needs pupil to the large city school districts and by failing to take into account adequately their major education overburdens, including their large numbers of pupils lacking the basic minimal educational skills, the State aid formula violates section 1 of article XI of the New York State Constitution (94 Misc 2d 466, 534 [1978]). Finally, the court found that there is an equal protection violation as well because of the resulting denial of equal educational opportunity. ( Id. ) In an opinion by Justice Leon D. Lazer, the Appellate Division affirmed except for the federal equal protection claim (83 AD2d 217 [1981]). The Court concluded as follows: In the face of evidence demonstrating that large numbers of children emerge from the school system lacking even the minimal tools necessary to function in society, and that the current financing scheme is in good measure a cause for the failures, we must conclude that the education article is violated by a method of financing which fails to establish a school system capable of providing an education for many educable children ( id. at 251). The concurring opinion of Justice Weinstein noted that [i]n giving less aid to city students, the education aid formula has a disproportionately adverse effect not only on pupils from impoverished families, but also with respect to race, country of origin and alienage ( id. at 254). This Court reversed and dismissed the case. The Court acknowledged significant inequalities in the availability of financial support for local school districts, ranging from minor discrepancies to major differences, resulting in significant unevenness in the educational opportunities offered (57 NY2d at 38). The Court then stated: No claim is advanced in this case, however, by either the original plaintiffs or the intervenors that the educational facilities or services provided in the school districts that they represent fall below the State-wide minimum standard of educational quality and quantity fixed by the Board of Regents; their attack is directed at the existing disparities in financial resources which lead to educational unevenness above that minimum standard. ( Id. ) As to the equal protection claims, the Court found that education was not a fundamental constitutional right, and reviewed the financing scheme under a rational basis standard. This characterization resulted in the dismissal of the claims. As to the Education Article claim, the Court based its finding largely on the perception that [w]hat appears to have been contemplated when the education article was adopted at the 1894 Constitutional Convention was a State-wide system assuring minimal acceptable facilities and services in contrast to the unsystematized delivery of instruction then in existence within the State (57 NY2d at 47). Yet, the Court determined that the legislative history of the Education Article was irrelevant to the determination of what was intended ( id. at 48 n 6). The Court then interpreted the Education Article to connote a sound basic education, which was being met since New York has long been regarded as a leader in free public education. ( Id. at 48.) Finally, the Court stated that it would be unwilling to override the Legislature's decision of how to distribute funds in the absence, possibly, of gross and glaring inadequacysomething not shown to exist in consequence of the present school financing system (57 NY2d at 48-49). In response to the dissent, the majority stated, The dissent illustrates the very great, and perhaps understandable, temptation to yield to a result-oriented resolution of this litigation ( id. at 49 n 9). Judge Fuchsberg, the lone dissenter, took issue with the majority's finding that education was not a fundamental right: In any meaningful ordering of priorities, it is in the impact education makes on the minds, characters and capabilities of our young citizens that we must find the answer to many seemingly insoluble societal problems. In the long run, nothing may be more importantand therefore more fundamentalto the future of our country. Can it be gainsaid that, without education there is no exit from the ghetto, no solution to unemployment, no cutting down on crime, no dissipation of intergroup tension, no mastery of the age of the computer? (57 NY2d at 51). Judge Fuchsberg relied on legislative history, including the report of the committee that drafted the Education Article, for his position. He addressed the failure of the formula to provide fiscally dependent cities with necessary aid, resulting in the delivery of an inadequate education. Then he noted, it could not be said as a matter of law that the picture painted by this proof of disparities and discriminations complied with even the undefined `minimal acceptable facilities and services' or the broadly stated `sound basic education'   . The fact is, of course, that in this past century, as high school and college statistics show, the acceptable level of education in our country has risen, not fallen. Responsively, the constitutional demands of our State's education article, must be deemed to have kept pace.    And, as great expounders of constitutional law, from Marshall to Holmes, have always made clear, such a document's permanence rests on its adaptability to changing events (Jackson, Struggle for Judicial Supremacy, p 174) ( id. at 57). Finally, Judge Fuchsberg agreed with the Appellate Division's application of an intermediate scrutiny standard to the state equal protection claim under which standard the funding scheme could not remain. In 1994, plaintiffs in Campaign for Fiscal Equity (86 NY2d 307 [1995]) commenced another action, decided today, arguing that the public school financing scheme violated the Education Article, the Equal Protection Clauses of the State and Federal Constitutions, and the implementing regulations to title VI (34 CFR 100.3 [b] [2]). We first distinguished Levittown by noting, The Court there manifestly left room for a conclusion that a system which failed to provide for a sound basic education would violate the Education Article ( id. at 316). We then found that a sound basic education should consist of the basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills necessary to enable children to eventually function productively as civic participants capable of voting and serving on a jury ( id. ) Paraphrasing from Levittown, we stated, If the physical facilities and pedagogical services and resources made available under the present system are adequate to provide children with the opportunity to obtain these essential skills, the State will have satisfied its constitutional obligation ( id. ). We then outlined a nonexclusive list of resources children need to obtain a sound basic education. We concluded that plaintiffs pleaded a proper cause of action under the Education Article because [t]aking as true the allegations in the complaint, as we must, plaintiffs allege and specify gross educational inadequacies that, if proven, could support a conclusion that the State's public school financing system effectively fails to provide for a minimally adequate educational opportunity (86 NY2d at 319). We dismissed the equal protection claims under the State and Federal Constitutions. However, we sustained the claim under the implementing regulations to title VI. The concurring opinion of Judge Levine agreed that this Court had a responsibility to determine the meaning of a sound basic education. Relying on the words of a legislator during the Constitutional Convention debates, Judge Levine concluded that the objective of the Education Article was to `make[] it imperative on the State to provide adequate free common schools for the education of all of the children of the State' and that the new provision would have an impact upon `places in the State of New York where the common schools are not adequate' (3 Revised Record of Constitutional Convention of 1894, at 695 [emphasis supplied]) (86 NY2d at 327). Nevertheless, Judge Levine did not agree with the key interpretation of a sound basic education as requiring skills necessary to become a productive citizen. Rather, he believed that, under Levittown, a system of sound basic education did not violate the Education Article if it provided basic reading and writing and computational skills, and citizenship awareness. Unlike the majority's standard, this standard would not invite and entail subjective, unverifiable educational policy making by Judges, unreviewable on any principled basis, which was anathema to the Levittown Court (86 NY2d at 332). Judge Simons, on the other hand, in his dissent in CFE I, concluded that plaintiffs had not successfully pleaded a cause of action under the Education Article. After reviewing the constitutional history of the Education Article, Judge Simons noted, I find no indication that the drafters intended to    impose a qualitative component within the Education Article, or to hold the State liable to make up a shortage of funds in particular school districts (86 NY2d at 335). In Judge Simons' view, it was up to the State to determine the meaning of a sound basic education, and this Court should not review an action under the Education Article unless a `gross and glaring inadequacy' in State funding was alleged (86 NY2d at 340). Judge Simons, and to an extent Judge Levine, and now Judge Read believe that issues of funding and quality of education should be settled by the political process and that this Court should refrain from participating. [2] It is certainly the case that in our system of government, the three branches are separated by walls. The walls, however, are not solid. [3] Rather, the concept of checks and balances gives to this Court the responsibility of interpreting the Constitution, even if that interpretation reaches into spheres which are normally the province of the two other branches. The reach may be limited to pronouncing the minimum that the Education Article requires. It does not constitute a takeover of the Legislature's responsibility to determine educational policy and funding. [4] The conclusion of this Court that the State is required to provide children in the twenty-first century with the opportunity to obtain a sound basic education is consistent with the spirit of the Education Article, which represents the culmination of a long fought struggle to ensure that all the children of New York, not just the children of the wealthy, would have access to a sound education. This case is a continuation of that struggle as is evident from a brief history.