Mayor: Lack Of State Funds Blocks School-Building Plan
By John Toscano

New York City will not be able to go through with plans to build 23 new schools if the state does not deliver what it owes to the city from a court-ordered award several years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated recently.

But Governor George Pataki, who has tied up the award of billions of dollars in education funds by an appeal of the court order, gave no indication he would be coming forward with any new funds, according to a spokesman.

Jumping in on the mayor’s side, City Councilmember Dennis Gallagher, said, “Clearly Albany needs to address the funding issue. The Forest Hills part of his council district is scheduled as the site of a major construction project consisting of a three-school campus on Metropolitan Avenue as part of the mayor’s $13 billion school building plan.”

Other Queens schools on the mayor’s construction list are P.S. 244, P.S. 245, P.S. 246 and P.S. 262.

These projects were part of a list provided by the Department of Education (DoE) after the mayor made his statement. They are part of a five-year capital construction plan which includes 23 new schools throughout the city.

School officials said a minimum of $1.8 billion was needed from Albany to get construction going.

The mayor had announced his ambitious $13.1 billon construction plan in November 2003. He had also called on Albany to pick up half the cost of the package—$6.5 billion—in addition to what the state allocates to the city for school construction.

The mayor had said the $6.5 billion from the state would be a down payment on more than $9 billion which state Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse ordered the state to pay the city for having shortchanged city school kids over a long period of years.

Pataki ignored DeGrasse’s order, paid nothing and appealed the order, tying up the matter in the court. The order called for the state to pay $5.6 billion per year and a one-time $9.2 billion for school construction and repairs.

Last year, after Pataki refused to comply with the court ordered, the mayor found the funding to comply with the city’s portion of the plan, some $2.6 billion in th 2005 budget. But speaking on his weekly radio show on December 9, he said the city couldn’t do any more to get his ambitious construction plan started. “If the state does not come up with their share, then we’re not going to be able to build a lot of the new schools we wanted,” the mayor said. “There’s 23 new schools requiring state funding and if we don’t get that, those just aren’t going to get started.”

The same basic message was sent out by mayoral aides to the parent councils representing the city’s 32 local school districts.