$9.2 Billion Needed for NYC School Construction, Report Says

NEW YORK-A court-appointed panel found that $9.2 billion worth of new classrooms, laboratories, libraries and other facilities were needed to relieve overcrowding, reduce class sizes and give the city’s 1.1 million public school students adequate spaces in which to learn.

Nearly every state has battled over its school spending in court, but the case in New York is one of the country’s biggest, both in terms of the money at stake and the number of children affected.

Justice Leland DeGrasse, the judge overseeing the case in State Supreme Court, appointed the panel last summer after lawmakers in Albany missed a one-year deadline imposed by the state’s highest court to stop shortchanging the city and fix what it called the “systemic failure” of New York’s schools.

Further, the panel found that an additional $5.6 billion must be spent on the city’s schoolchildren every year to provide the opportunity for a solid, basic education that they are guaranteed by the State Constitution.

The figure the panel recommended, a 43 percent increase to the city’s $12.9 billion school budget, came very close to what the city said it needed. The panel gave the state only 90 days to figure out how to put an extra $9.2 billion towards school construction and repairs, but allowed that money to be phased in over five years. The plan calls for about $1.8 billion in each of the five years.