"It's been years in the making," said Barbara Bernstein, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union's Nassau Chapter.

"Years," she said again, with emphasis.

"Because it has been apparent for years that scholastic achievement in minority areas is simply so poor that something more has to be afoot than 'kid can't learn.'"

Earlier this month, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan which condemns the state's educational system for allegedly discriminating against minority children.

Specifically, they are charging, under Title Six of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that the state's method of funding education deprives minority school children of adequate resources, thereby perpetuating poor performance in the schools.

In January, the group will file a second suit, in state court in Albany, alleging that the state doesn't even meet its bottom-line thresholds when it comes to fostering education for minority school children.

Together the two suits, filed on behalf of 80,000 New York school children, including those attending class in Westbury, Hempstead, Uniondale, Roosevelt, Freeport, Wyandanch and Amityville, seek to create a more equitable system to distribute educational resources throughout the state.

Among the local schools named in the suit are the Dutch Broadway and Gotham Avenue Schools in Elmont.

"What really hit home for us as we prepared to file the first of the two lawsuits was a passage in the latest edition of the state's annual education report," Bernstein said.

"It said that there is a 'dismaying alignment' between districts with a large minority population and schools with poor resources. The state itself identified that.

"To our minds, for this to occur, and for it to be allowed to continue, is a blatant act of racial discrimination," Bernstein continued.

Ironically, the Civil Liberties Union is basing its claims of discrimination on the very measures New York State uses to monitor its schools, such as teacher turn-over, the attendance and drop-out rates, the number of Regents courses taken, and remedial services offered.

The state defines a minority school as one with an ethnic population of at least 80 percent.

In all, 150 schools throughout the state are named in the suit, as are eight school districts. Both Bernstein and Donald Shaffer, legal director of the Nassau Chapter of the NYCLU, emphasize that being named in the suit, as the Dutch Broadway and Gotham Avenue schools are, doesn't automatically mean that they are considered poor performers.

"While in some cases the schools named in the suit fail by every measure, in many cases they were named simply because they have been defined by the state as 'minority school districts' or 'minority schools.'

"What we're fighting for here is fiscal equity for minority schools, and so it was important to name every school described that way by the state's own assessment."

In addition to failing to equitably disperse funds and uphold its own standards, the state also stands accused of simply failing to have simple checks and balances in place.

"Statewide, all students are tested in the third and sixth grades, and then again in high school, with the SAT," Bernstein said. "Now, the state used to use those test scores to identify which schools were failing their kids and demand remediation.

"That doesn't happen anymore, and prompts us to ask, 'How are you going to bring these schools up to the proper level if you're not going to assess them that way?' and 'How can you expect children to achieve if you are providing such poor service to them in the first place?"

Named in the federal lawsuit as defendants are Governor George Pataki, Education Commissioner Richard Mills, and Carl Hayden, chancellor of the state Board of Regents.

They now have until early January to respond.