Opinion ID: 500653
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: City Influence on the Board

Text: 161 Under state law, the Yonkers school district is fiscally dependent upon the City, and the Board's annual budget is subject to approval, line by line, by the Council. N.Y.Educ.Law Sec. 2576 (McKinney 1981). Because of the Council's fiscal control over the Board, in the public mind there [were] two boards of education actually operating, with citizens often looking directly to the Council in school matters. There was no evidence, however, that the Council in any particular instance disapproved a school budget that included a desegregation plan; there could be no such evidence because the Board never sought to implement a plan that had any significant desegregative elements. 162 The Board's willingness to put specific proposals before the Council was not constrained solely by fiscal considerations. For example, in 1973, the superintendent recommended to the Board, and the Board submitted to the Council, recommendations for vocational program modifications that were more expensive than the pairing-and-sharing proposal of the NYU Report. Both the East Yonkers community and a number of Council members had publicly opposed the NYU Report's recommendation. The Board's spurning of the less expensive NYU proposals was influenced by the perceived infeasibility of obtaining City Council approval. 624 F.Supp. at 1506. Similarly, in the Phase II proposals, the school closings and the state's substantial subsidization of transportation costs would have resulted in a net reduction of the school system's annual expenditures, and fiscal concerns thus could not explain the Board's rejection of those proposals. As a practical matter, however, East Yonkers community opposition to Phase II was strong, Council members and the mayor had publicly expressed their opposition, and the Board always had an eye on what was politically, not just fiscally, feasible. As one Board official put it, we, in essence, had to convince another series of people, most of whom were elected by the community, and to the extent that the community resisted the idea, any idea, it seems to me that that would have some impact upon the people who owed election to those same individuals. 163 The City's influence on the Board was also visible in certain decisions as to school sites and configurations. For example, in the late 1960's the Board commenced plans for School 10, which it intended to open as an integrated elementary school in Southwest Yonkers, drawing students from School 3 (then 34% minority), School 19 (then 68% minority), and School 27 (then 5% minority). Planned as an experiment in the open school concept, in which the interior space would be flexible, unstructured, and without walls, the building was to be located on a five-acre site having a general openness of environment harmonious with the openness to be found within. As eventually constructed, however, School 10 was a mean and inadequate ghetto school, due largely to changes urged by the City which the Board grudgingly felt compelled to accept. 164 Without recounting the many events that occurred en route to the birth of School 10, which are described in detail in the district court's opinion, 624 F.Supp. at 1403-10 and 1542-43, suffice it to say that first, the Board agreed to change its preferred site to one in the middle of an urban renewal project (in order to allow the City to use the construction of School 10 as a statutorily permitted noncash contribution to the urban renewal area); later it accepted a one-acre site instead of the originally approved five acres (because the City decided to erect additional apartments on part of the site); as the site was developed, the front of the school could not be seen from the street (because the City wanted that frontage for an apartment-retail-store complex); and in the end, the school had virtually no outdoor recreation area (because the City needed more garage space for apartment residents). Though the Board objected to the City's inroads into the School 10 facilities, it eventually capitulated to each demand. 165 Because of its location behind other buildings and its lack of outdoor play area, School 10 became known as the airshaft school and was characterized immediately as a new ghetto school. By 1980, it had the fourth largest minority percentage enrollment in the City.