There's a lot out there in the papers and in the blogs on yesterday's CFE Court of Appeals decision. I won't link to it all because I'm jammed with work this week, but I did want to note a couple of quick thoughts:

1.) As many folks pointed out, Governor-to-be Eliot Spitzer (not to mention his future budget office) seems to be the biggest winner here for the obvious reasons. He'll cough up a bunch more cash but still will be able to throw some state money to programs supporting the elderly, subway riders, etc.

2.) Yesterday I posted comments that suggested the $5.6 billion figure wasn't real. I have no doubt that is true. But on the same token, the $1.9 billion ordered by the appellate court yesterday is just as bogus. The former was a high number seemingly intended to be used as a sort of bargaining chip, the latter was a low number designed to serve the same purpose.

So for me this is the most important thing for us to consider with all of this: We really still have absolutely no clue how much an "adequate" education is supposed to cost in New York City. One reason is because we've never really tried to offer one.

For those who felt (with ample justification) that school spending decisions are best left to the elected Legislature, this would seem to put the ball in Mayor Bloomberg's court. Rather than arguing that the courts said NYC schools needed more money, this is a golden opportunity for the city itself to argue how much it really needs to create a system with 1,400 great schools.

For all the complaining about the city DOE's Alvarez and Marsal contract to trim the fat from the DOE's bureaucracy, it seems to me that making a very strong public case that you are already spending your existing billions appropriately is EXACTLY what the city should be starting to do right now. Only then can we talk about how much more is needed, and for what.

So yeah, the city is going to end up getting a couple of billion more per year for its schools. But that's still just politics. Bloomberg and his Chancellor Joel Klein should continue to make their own case for how much "adequacy" really costs. They can start by pointing to public charter schools in the city that have shown high levels of achievement using budgets built from the ground up. What kind of decisions did charter school leaders make, in terms of weighing costs/benefits? What would they absolutely refuse to cut even if some bean-counter put a gun to their heads? What would they do differently if they were given an extra $1,000 per student?

Somewhere in all of this reform that is swirling all around us are the answers to the $5.6 billion question.