Overhauling the state’s complex school-aid formula could take years – not the months ordered by a judge – if the experience of other states holds true.
States resorted to everything from diverting money from other programs to state and local tax hikes to bring funding equity to the schools.
And the results have been decidedly mixed.
In New Jersey, the education system is improving after a new system has the state ensuring that the 28 poorest school districts receive the same amount of aid as the 100 highest, said Michael Rebell, chief litigator for Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which challenged New York’s funding formula.
But it took 27 years after the first lawsuits were filed.
Schools districts throughout Texas and Kentucky have benefited from court-ordered changes to aid formulas, but Connecticut and West Virginia saw little difference, Rebell conceded.
Kansas City spent more than a billion dollars on state-of-the-art equipment and premier magnet schools to try to close racial disparities, but to little avail.
Many states have found it difficult to negotiate new formulas that satisfy not only all political interests, but the courts as well.
The Arizona Supreme Court, for instance, ruled the funding system unconstitutional in 1994. Three plans were rejected by the court before a system with an initial price tag of $375 million was approved five years later.
In New Hampshire, two plans have already been struck down by the courts, and the fight is ongoing.
In Wednesday’s New York ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse gave legislative leaders until Sept. 15 to come up with a system.
“That’s a very short time,” said Mary Fulton, a policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, a national nonprofit organization. “This is a very complicated situation. It’s also very political.”
Most states, she said, take a year to prepare even an initial solution.