Superintendent Dr. Kevin Whitaker said it’s up to the State Legislature to decide how to act now that the Appellate Court Judges have sent the decision to them, “It is unlikely that we’ll get the lump sum of what we’ve been owed. Very unlikely that would happen but we anticipate something will be coming in the next few years.”

Whitaker said the Jamestown School District had been shorted $106 million. He said the state requires districts to provide services to help students who are struggling, “Small city school districts tend to have a larger percentage of students who are struggling. Therefore they’d need more assistance, but they have very low ability to raise money through taxes, so they would have required more money to support the concentration of students who struggle. Therefore, the lawsuit said the state did not provide us with enough foundational money in order to accomplish that task through the hiring of staff, tutoring, and those sorts of things that other districts were able to do as a result of their tax bases.”

The final litigation fee payment approved by the School Board was in the amount of $10,000.

The School Board also adopted the district’s Safety Plan for the 2021-22 school year along with the individual school safety plans. These are plans that are required by New York State. The District’s approved plan can be read at jpsny.org/safetyplan.

The New York State Appellate Court has rejected Cuomo’s request to appeal a May 27th decision in the small city school case – Maisto versus State of New York. The unanimous decision by the Third Appellate Division in May overturned the Governor’s position that education aid in 8 small city school districts, including Jamestown, was constitutionally sufficient.

Cuomo argued that there were important constitutional issues yet to be determined in the appeal received on July 12th. The court denied the motion without comment.

The decision leaves New York State with no option but to take steps necessary to provide significant additional school aid to these districts. Any further appeal would only allow the Governor to delay the case further which has been his primary tactic since 2008 when the Maisto case was commenced.

The case will have enormous impact on education funding, in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually just for the eight districts of Jamestown, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis, Poughkeepsie and Utica. If the principles established by the Third Department decision are applied statewide, the fiscal impact could be even greater.

The Maisto plaintiffs started the case in 2008 because they believed their districts were not getting enough educational funding/resources to give their students, mainly poor and disadvantaged, what they needed to succeed and that this violated the state constitution.

This was substantiated by the districts’ very low graduation rates, teacher pupil ratios and support staff ratios. During the period covered by the trial of the case, which looked at the districts’ performances from 2006-7 to 2013-14, these districts lost over $1 billion in promised funding which resulted in over 1500 teacher and staff layoffs.

• MOBILE APP USERS: LISTEN VIA SOUNDCLOUD

Originally airing Thursday, March 28, 2019

WRFA’s Jason Sample talks with Dr. Bret Apthorpe, superintendent of Jamestown Public Schools, about the 2019-20 State budget and the impact it will have on next year’s Jamestown School Budget. Dr. Apthorpe also provides an update on a couple of other items including the Small City Schools Lawsuit , the soon-to-be-opened Success Academy, and the search for a new principal at Jamestown High School.

Dr. Bret Apthorpe, Jamestown Public Schools superintendent

On Tuesday the school board received an update on the ongoing lawsuit – now 10 years in the making – including what will likely happen now that a State Supreme Court judge in Albany last month ruled against the eight small city districts that are part of a lawsuit against the state, claiming they are not receiving equitable funding and the state needs to comply with the State Constitution, which requires the provision of a “sound basic education” for all children.

Jamestown is one of those eight districts. The seven other small cities districts joining Jamestown are Utica, Poughkeepsie, Mount Vernon, Kingston, Newburgh, Port Jervis and Niagara Falls. Because districts can not directly sue the state, the eight districts are members of a group that is paying the legal fees to help the case move forward and each district pays a membership fee to that group.

In 2009, at the outset of the case, then known as Hussein v. State of New York, the Supreme Court trial court denied the State’s motion to dismiss. In 2011, the intermediate appellate division court affirmed, and in 2012, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, also affirmed, allowing the case to proceed. In 2015 the Maisto trial was conducted in State Supreme Court in Albany, in front of the Honorable Kimberly A. O’Connor. In 2016 O’Connor issued a ruling dismissing the plaintiff’s claims. That ruling was appealed and in 2017 the appellate division reinstated the lawsuit, sending it back to O’Connor to be reviewed again. O’Connor’s decision in January 2019 was the latest outcome in the ongoing legal saga.

Jamestown School Board President Paul Abbott tells WRFA it’s frustrating because the case has dragged on for several years, with the previous ruling having already been appealed only to have it punted back to the same Supreme Court judge in Albany.

“When it’s gone back to certain judges it seems that it’s gets batted back at us and we are again in front of appeals court judges that tell us, ‘No, small cities schools, you are correct. These other judges were wrong.’ And then it just becomes that cycle. That’s when you have decide when it is time to step out of the ring and turn your focus to other things,” Abbott explained.

Abbott adds that if the district were to stay financially invested in the case, the cost wouldn’t be a lot, but at some point the board has to determine when is the district throwing good money after bad.

“The district is spending a little bit of money to support our legal representation in this battle. The board’s role in this is to decide if we continue to support it or to make the decision that it’s time to – whether we know we’re right or not – perhaps its time to give up the fight if it’s becoming not responsible to stay in a fight which we don’t feel that we can win,” Abbott said.

Abbott adds the board will take the advice of legal council before making the decision on how to proceed, as well as consider input from its liaison in the case – former school board president Joe DiMaio – who continues to speak with the attorneys and officials from the other districts involved with the case. Joining DiMaio in that effort is current school board member Nina Karbacka.

Both DiMaio and Karbacka gave the school board an update on the lawsuit during Tuesday’s board meeting- weighing both the pros and cons of being involved in the lawsuit.

Both agreed it would be worthwhile for the district to remain involved in the case rather than sitting on the sidelines, mostly because as active participants who are helping to fund the case, they have a direct line with the attorneys involved and can offer direct input on a monthly basis.

Abbott said he was unsure of when the board would make a decision on making additional payments, saying it would likely depend on when the attorneys involved request a new round of funding to keep things moving forward.

MOBILE APP USERS: LISTEN HERE

Recorded Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019.
Initially broadcast Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019.

Jamestown Public Schools Superintendent Bret Apthorpe talks about several issues involving the school district, including the Small Cities Lawsuit (Maisto v. New York), the State Budget, the upcoming 2019-20 school budget process, student performance, and an update on several initiatives the district will be rolling out in the coming months.

Dr. Bret Apthorpe, Jamestown Public Schools superintendent

A state appeals court unanimously reversed a trial judge’s 2016 ruling that had dismissed the Maisto v. New York case, which is also known as the small cities lawsuit that accused the state of under-funding eight school districts in small cities, including Jamestown.

At issue is state funding, which the small schools argue falls short of what they need to provide the sound, basic education guaranteed by the state constitution.

Last fall, Albany County State Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor had ruled against the schools without considering the evidence they supplied that the state had failed to provide adequate financial aid.

The appeals course on Thursday sends the case back to trial court for review of evidence presented, but not considered, during the trial, including resource deficiencies, student performance, and outcomes.

The plaintiffs in the Maisto case are parents and students from Jamestown, Utica, Kingston, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Niagara Falls, Port Jervis and Poughkeepsie.

On Tuesday, an Albany County state Supreme Court justice ruled against Jamestown and seven other plaintiffs from “small city school districts” who contended that the state has failed to adequately fund them, in light of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit that almost a decade ago found that New York City schools had been systemically shortchanged when it came to state aid.

That decision led to changes in the way per-student costs in the city system are calculated. And it led to the use of a Foundation Aid approach, which essentially laid out a per-student formula for funding all of the state’s schools.

But Jamestown and the seven other small city schools said their schools, which served a lot of underprivileged students, were still being shortchanged.

Acting Justice Kimberly O’Connor disagreed and part of her ruling focused on the court’s reluctance to impinge on legislative budget decisions.

O’Connor found that the legislature can adjust school funding as needed and the Foundation Aid levels, that were created at the end of the Pataki Administration, don’t need to represent a minimum amount.

She also concluded that reforms designed to address educational inequities don’t have to be strictly financial.

In addition to Jamestown, the seven other districts involved in the lawsuit are Utica, Niagara Falls, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Port Jervis, and Mt. Vernon.

Lawyers for the districts that sued are planning an appeal.

Joe DiMaio

JAMESTOWN – Jamestown School Board President Joe DiMaio is the new leader of a statewide group who’s goal is to look out for the interests of small city school districts.

DiMaio was recently elected President of the New York State Association of Small City School Districts and will serve a one-year term. The Association was formed in 1985 and consists of Superintendents and members of the Boards of Education in the 57 small city school districts, representing approximately 240,000 students across the state.

Among the goals of the association is to advocate on behalf of small-city districts to effect change in state laws, regulations, and policy; as well as to raise awareness of small city issues and provide a forum for the exchange of ideas among similarly situated city school officials.

In a media release from the Jamestown School Distirct, DiMaio said he felt it was important to serve on the board because small cities are continually under-funded as well as inequitably funded.

According to school officials, Jamestown is the 6th poorest district in New York State, yet 200 schools in New York get more state aid per pupil.

The 57 small city school districts serve approximately twice the number of students than the “Big 4” school districts of Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Yonkers combined – about 240,000 vs. 120,000 students.

Several small city school districts, including Jamestown, have also filed a lawsuit against the state to provide better equity in school funding. That case has already been argued with closing remarks being made in March – but it could be the end of this year or early next year before Acting Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor issues her ruling.

Both Superintendent Tim Mains and Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Jessie Joy provided testimony in the trial, which began on Jan. 21 after more than six years of delays.

In the lawsuit, which is known as Maisto v. New York, the eight school districts argue that both parents and teachers have experienced the negative effects of inadequate state aid. The districts say that state cuts in education funding are depriving students of the “sound basic education” that they are entitled to under the New York Constitution.

The eight districts believe they deserve a more equitable distribution of state aid to fund daily operations. They would like to see a restoration in state aid totaling $255 million annually, to help offset the state’s freezing of funding under the New York Foundation Aid Formula several years ago.