A new ruling from the state’s highest court that the state owes only a fraction of the money demanded in a long-running lawsuit on behalf of New York City schools shifts the issue onto Governor-elect Spitzer.

Mr. Spitzer, while campaigning for governor, said he would move to quickly settle the lawsuit for between $4 billion and $6 billion a year in additional operating aid, which is at least double the $1.93 billion mandated by the court yesterday.

The decision yesterday appeared to end the 13-year-old lawsuit by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity by affirming previous rulings that New York City has been unable to provide the sound, basic education required by the state constitution because of funding shortages. The 4–2 majority opinion rejected the lower court rulings that the city needs $4.6 billion a year to remedy the situation, however. They settled instead on $1.93 billion a year, the lowest number in a range of estimates produced in a study commissioned by Governor Pataki.

The ruling brought audible sighs of relief from all sides, but it may not be the end of the conflict. Plaintiffs said yesterday they would not settle for anything less than the $4.6 billion.

“They’re wrong. I don’t accept their opinion even though it may be final,” the chairman of the education committee, City Council Member Robert Jackson, said. He was also an original plaintiff in the case, as were two of his daughters who were enrolled in the city’s schools. “The hearts of the children are crying,” he said.

“I don’t think the facts governed the decision,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Joseph Wayland, said of the court’s choice of the lower number. “Here’s what the difference means: lower test scores. It means children who can’t read. It means children who can’t do math.”

Supporters of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity said they would now look to Mr. Spitzer to fulfill promises made during his campaign to settle the case for between $4 billion and $6 billion.

“We are hopeful,” the executive director of the campaign, Geri Palast, said of Mr. Spitzer’s intentions. “But the fact is, it’s our job to put pressure on him.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Spitzer will allocate all of the extra funding demanded by the plaintiffs now that the courts have set a lower number. In a statement yesterday, Mr. Spitzer said once he is sworn into office he would propose “significant additional funding” above the constitutional minimum set forth in the court decision. But Mr. Spitzer did not specify how much he would ask for in his executive budget.

For most of the course of the lawsuit, Mr. Spitzer argued on behalf of the defendant, the state, in his role as attorney general.

He said during his campaign he would not need to raise taxes to cover the extra funding for schools, but Mr. Spitzer also suggested that he expected the city to pay for as much as half of the extra funding, a statement that has riled Mayor Bloomberg. The mayor says the city has already contributed its share by increasing spending by $3.5 billion a year during his tenure in office. New York City taxpayers contribute about 40% of the state’s tax revenue, so even a settlement that comes entirely from the state budget will be funded to a substantial extent by New York City taxpayers.

It was the third time the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, had ruled in the case. The ruling was written by the newest member of the court, Justice Eugene Pigott Jr., who was sworn in just moments before the last hearing in the case.

Chief Justice Judith Kaye wrote the dissent, reasserting the court’s earlier position that it should avoid interfering in state budgeting decisions, but arguing that $1.93 billion was inadequate.

“Even defendants did not recommend these numbers,” she wrote.

Previously, the court has firmly resisted setting a dollar amount, saying it was not the court’s role to “micro-manage education financing.” The court’s decision to set the amount came after the state had missed deadlines to allocate the extra funding. The Republican-controlled state Senate had been the main obstacle.

Plaintiff’s lawyers hailed the court’s change of heart as a triumph for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, saying it set an important precedent requiring the state to adhere to a new funding formula when determining state aid to school districts.

“We still consider ourselves in the winner’s column,” one of the lawyers, Michael Rebell, said. “When you sit back here and look at $2 billion, this is not pocket change.”

He also noted that the ruling was possibly the largest amount that an American court has awarded to a school district among other similar cases.

Critics of the lawsuit were pleased with the amount of the judgment, but frustrated with the court’s decision to step into the realm of state budgeting.

“The Court of Appeals had done the right thing, they had admitted this was not their business,” said a researcher at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Eric Hanushek, who wrote a book arguing that more money doesn’t correlate with successful schools. “We’re a little bit disappointed.”

He added that the amount of the judgment, at the low end of numbers that had been discussed, vindicated his arguments that schools don’t need more money to make improvements to education.

The ruling rejected the plaintiff’s demands that a system be created to oversee how the money is spent, something Mr. Rebell said they would continue to fight for.

“I think as citizens of New York we are entitled to know how it’s going to be spent,” he said.

Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that he was pleased that the oversight measure had been dropped.

“I think we’re doing a spectacular job with the school system right now and the last need is more bureaucracy,” he said. “We’re trying to cut our bureaucracy not add to it.”

The ruling did not specify a deadline for when the funding must be allocated, or the period of time that it should be paid. Campaign lawyers said they assumed the judges intended for the money to be allocated in the next fiscal year.

If the funds are not forthcoming, the lawyers said they would head back to court.