Physical education can have similar effects in supporting a sound basic education. Sports can aid students in acquiring important socialization skills such as cooperation, good sportsmanship, and the importance of practice as a means of achieving mastery. A good sports program may increase school attendance of at-risk students. Both arts and physical education were severely defunded after New York City's fiscal crisis in the mid-1970's. Budget cutbacks affected every aspect of the arts curriculum until the initiation of Project ARTS in 1997. Project ARTS is a collaborative project between the City and BOE through which the City has contributed $150 million to restoring arts education in New York City. Project ARTS, while a step in the right direction, cannot restore the arts curriculum overnight after 20 years of neglect. School space formerly dedicated to the arts has been converted to other purposes, as arts programs atrophied and the City's public schools became increasingly overcrowded. The restoration of an adequate physical education program faces similar obstacles. Over the last 20 years gymnasiums and playgrounds were allowed to deteriorate and/or were converted into instructional space due to overcrowding. The credible evidence at trial demonstrated that arts and physical education need their own dedicated spaces within a school. [187 [187 Misc.2d Misc.2d 39] 39] The dilapidated state of the City's public school buildings is described in the next section. F. S c h o o l F a c i l i t i e s a n d C l a s s r o o m s The second "input" set forth in the Court of Appeals 1995 decision concerns the physical plant in which a sound basic education is to take place. "Children are entitled to minimally adequate physical facilities and classrooms which provide enough light, space, heat, and air to permit children to learn." (Campaign for Fiscal Equity v State of New York, 86 N.Y.2d 307, 317, supra.) A substantial number of BOE's approximately 1,100 facilities require major infrastructural repair to items such as roofs and facades. Many more facilities are plagued by overcrowding, poor wiring, pock-marked plaster and peeling paint, inadequate (or nonexistent) climate control, and other deficiencies that speak of a history of neglect. Though it would appear to be self-evident that such conditions would impede, rather than facilitate, the delivery of a sound basic education, this proposition is difficult to prove or disprove. For the reasons set forth below the court finds that there is a causal link between New York City's poor school facilities and the performance of students, though the strength of that link is difficult to measure. 1. The Condition of City Public Schools For more than a decade, the parlous physical state of New York City's approximately 1,100 public school buildings has been recognized in written pronouncements of the State Legislature, SED and BOE. The credible testimony at trial confirmed the bleak picture. In 1988, the State Legislature created the New York City School Construction Authority (SCA), a separate authority for the construction of schools, based on legislative findings that decried the "deplorable" condition of the City's schools. The legislature hereby finds and declares that the elementary and secondary schools of the city of New York are in deplorable physical condition. Many of the schools are overcrowded, unsafe, unhealthy and unusable. The physical deterioration of the schools is a serious impediment to learning and teaching. If the quality of education in New York city is to be improved, the city's schools must be modernized, expanded and restored to a state of good repair. (New York City School Construction Authority Act, L 1988, ch 738, § 1 [approved Dec. 19, 1988].) a. SED and BOE Documents The creation of SCA did not succeed in shoring up City public schools' crumbling infrastructure. The lack of progress is documented in a series of master plans and five-year capital plans developed by BOE during the past decade. In 1989 BOE developed its Year 2000 Master Plan to "determine the level of effort required to restore the New York City public school system to a state of good repair and to modernize and expand it by the year 2000." The Year 2000 Master Plan concluded that "the estimated cost for completely upgrading and modernizing the school system by the 21st Century is $17 billion in current dollars." BOE did not come close to spending this amount by the close of 1999. When it prepared the Year 2000 Master Plan, BOE also prepared a five-year capital plan for the period 1990-1994. Unlike master plans, which identify all the needs of the system over a 10-year period, the five-year capital plans identify only those items that require urgent attention and can be reasonably funded and fixed within a five-year period. Four years later, BOE again reviewed the state of public school facilities in its Year 2003 Master Plan. As then-Chancellor Fernandez wrote: "The year 2003 Master Plan is a comprehensive needs assessment based on all available technical data and information." The Year 2003 Master Plan stated that the total cost for meeting the system's needs by 2003 was $25 billion in 1992 dollars. 23 The Plan noted that though the previous Master Plan had called for over $17 billion to be spent over 10 years, the first five-year capital plan had been funded at only $4.3 billion. The Year 2003 Master Plan reflects a system unable to maintain even an inadequate status quo. The Plan notes: Deterioration is occurring at a rate faster than we can save systems, and much of what needed repair back in 1988, as predicted, now needs replacement. The buildings that required modernization back in 1988 that were not modernized in the current capital plan are a tremendous drain on the lump sum and maintenance budgets leaving no funding for the other 500 buildings in need of capital work. The Year 2003 Master Plan found that 85% of the system needed some kind of capital work, with 424 buildings requiring modernization. The Plan identified a severe impediment to maintaining, modernizing and replacing schools which is discussed at greater length below: overcrowding in New York City public schools. The next BOE five-year capital plan (covering fiscal years 1995-1999) described a "crisis on three fronts." On the first front, the capital plan noted that