STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE REGARDING THE NEW YORK CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION’S LAWSUIT AGAINST THE STATE OF NEW YORK

New York, NY, March 28,2001– Dr. Velma L. Cobb, Ed.D., Director of Education and Youth Development for the National Urban League and chief administrator of the League’s Campaign for African American Achievement, today issued the following statement in conjunction with a New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) press conference to unveil the NYCLU’s plans for a lawsuit against the State of New York, which charges that the State violates the constitutional rights of New York’s children to receive the opportunity for a sound, basic education.

"The National Urban League, which spearheads the nation’s oldest and largest community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic and social mainstream, strongly supports the New York Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit demanding that the State of New York provide children with the constitutionally required opportunity for a sound, basic education.

At the heart of the Urban League movement are our Urban League affiliates in more than 100 cities in 34 states and the District of Columbia, including several throughout the State of New York. Unfortunately, the evidence that the public school systems in the communities served by our affiliates in Binghamton, Buffalo, Central Islip, New York City, Rochester, Syracuse, and White Plains are failing to provide our children the quality of education they need and deserve is compelling and unambiguous.

No citizen of this state or nation should tolerate school systems that force children to learn in substandard conditions and without adequate resources and supports. The conditions in these public schools provide dramatic illustration of the need for systemic education reform in New York. As National Urban League President Hugh Price has stated, this means creating 21^st century schools for 21^st century children, including, but not limited to, these critical improvements:

1. Recruiting a new generation of urban educators and compensating them on par with other professionals while holding them accountable for their performance.
2. Granting urban schools greater autonomy, but holding them accountable for their performance.
3. Replacing mammoth, obsolete, anonymous schools with new schools that are small, state-of-the art and focused on learning. There is substantial evidence that urban youngsters perform better in smaller schools.

The National Urban League hopes that the State of New York will respond to NYCLU’s actions with resources, practices, and policies that demonstrate a renewed commitment to ensuring that its public schools provide every child, whether black, white, Latino, poor, or of any other background or circumstance, the educational opportunities he or she needs to be equipped for equal citizenship and economic self-reliance in the 21^st Century."