"Children are entitled to
minimally adequate
physical facilities and
classrooms which
provide enough light,
space, heat, and air to
permit children to learn.
Children should have
access to minimally
adequate
instrumentalities of
learning such as desks,
chairs, pencils, and
reasonably current
textbooks. Children are
also entitled to minimally
adequate teaching of
reasonably up- to-date
basic curricula such as
reading, writing,
mathematics, science,
and social studies, by
sufficient personnel
adequately trained to
teach those subject
areas" (86 2 at 317).
As we further explained, many of the more detailed standards
established by the Board of Regents and Commissioner of
Education "exceed notions of a minimally adequate or sound
basic education," so that proof that schools do not comply with
such standards "may not, standing alone, establish a violation of
the Education Article" ( id.). The trial court, accordingly, declined
to fix the most recent, and ambitious, statement of educational
goals -- the Regents Learning Standards, adopted in 1996 -- as
the definition of a sound basic education (187 Misc 2d at 12). As