Nearly three decades of deferred maintenance, aging school buildings and rising student enrollment continue to inflate the system’s capital needs, while recent attempts to inject new funding have been thwarted. This past year, voters defeated a bond act that would have provided $2.4 billion for school construction and repair and Governor Pataki vetoed $500 million in school construction aid proposed by the state legislature.
A recent court ruling added new urgency to the city’s need to repair its public schools. Finding that nearly one-fifth of the city’s public schools possessed hazardous conditions and that the city had failed to comply with city and state statutes regarding school inspections and maintenance, the State Supreme Court sided with the local teachers union and has required the city to develop a remediation plan.
Click here (pdf) to read CHPC’s assessment of New York’s deteriorating school buildings as well as an analysis of how Yankees fans stack up against baseball attendees in other major metropolitan areas.