The 2021-22 New York State budget meets a thirty-year-old demand and thirteen-year-old broken promise: equitably fund New York State's public schools so that no matter what zip code a child resides in, there is a baseline of quality their public schools can afford to meet.
The massive, downright Dickensian difference in funding between schools that sometimes are mere blocks from each other has been a hallmark of New York's public education system for generations. In 2012, a Schott Foundation report on the particularly stark disparities in New York City described it as education redlining: schools with predominantly white children were far better funded — and unsurprisingly, had higher academic outcomes — than schools with predominantly Black and Latinx children. We found a similar disparity with income as well. As the report concluded, "A Black or Hispanic student, or a student of any race or ethnicity from a low-income household, is most likely to be enrolled in one of the city’s poorest performing high schools."
By 2012 it shouldn't have been that way. Five years earlier, in 2007, the 13-year Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit concluded in a victory for public schools: New York State agreed, under court mandate, to commit more than $5.5 billion in funding over four years to equitably fund all public schools. 70% of that funding was to go to the lowest-income school districts, whose property tax bases couldn't compare with those of wealthier cities and neighborhoods. However, this funding, known as Foundation Aid, never fully materialized. Between the 2008 financial crisis and a wave of budget cuts by legislators, what should have been a decade of equity became one of austerity. And as is always the case when state governments tighten their belts, low-income and BIPOC residents bore the brunt of it.
But the Campaign for Fiscal Equity was always more than just a lawsuit: it was at the heart of a renaissance of education CONTINUE READING: A 30-year Fight for School Funding Equity Ends in a Resounding Victory | Schott Foundation for Public Education