Waiting in the security line at the Albany, New York, capitol building on Monday, Megan Moskop, a special education middle school teacher at a public school in upper Manhattan, heard a chant begin from the chorus of voices around her, “La educacion—no se vende!”

Moskop, who traveled to the state capitol to participate in a Moral Monday rally focused on education equality in New York, said she believes Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has turned his back on the majority of New York children.

“It seems like Gov. Cuomo and others are saying, ‘We are going to put money into these special projects, like charter schools, and those lucky students will excel,” Moskop told Rewire. “I would never say to my students ‘I’m going to teach just five of you today, and those lucky ones can get an education.’ Our school system reinforces societal inequalities.”

New York City has the largest public school system in the country and also one of the most segregated and unequal: Black and Hispanic students are nearly four times more likely to be enrolled in a poor-performing high school than white or Asian students, and none of the city’s strongest schools are located in its poorest neighborhoods, according to a report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

A second report, released this year by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, found that more than half of the city’s schools districts had 10 percent or less white students in 2010.

#MoralMondayAlbany Tis the beginning of what has to happen to let NYS Legislators see our determination 4 ed equality pic.twitter.com/Azx9d7r2Zp

— phyllis young murray (@cybrarian75x) January 13, 2015

The Monday rally in Albany was the first time Moral Monday organizers, led by Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, had gone north to New York. Hundreds of people from across the state, including teachers, students, parents, activists, and state lawmakers, flooded the capitol’s iconic Million Dollar Staircase—named after its price tag—to demand the equitable funding of poorer school districts.

“The only way you can accept the inequality of funding at public schools is to argue that certain children in certain communities are inherently inferior,” Barber said during a speech at the rally.

New York is hardly alone in its segregation of students by race and class, and inequality in education is endemic in United States schools writ large. But activists and equality advocates in New York say they expect better of Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged to fix the lack of access to quality education for communities of color.

In fact, inequality in education has increased during Cuomo’s tenure in the governor’s mansion. The gap in spending between wealthy and poor school districts has widened, despite an overall increase in spending to education. During his first term, the gap in spending per pupil grew from from $8,024 to $8,733, the largest in the state’s history, according to a report by the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE).

The spending gap corresponds to a gap in educational outcome, particularly in graduation rates between wealthy and poor schools, according to the report.

Jasmine Gripper, statewide education advocate for the Alliance for Quality Education who attended Monday’s rally, said part of the problem is how the state allocates money to public schools based on property taxes in the district.

“New York state has some of the best schools in the country, but they are concentrated in wealthy areas, because of high property taxes in those areas,” Gripper told Rewire from the rally. “When we look at state aid, it should make up the gap where property taxes fall short, but that’s not happening in New York.”

The state’s supreme court in 2006 ruled in Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York that the state had violated the constitution by failing to ensure public schools were funded adequately. In 2007, the New York legislature dedicated $7 billion per year in additional funding, but that promise ended with the recession that began shortly thereafter.

A new lawsuit estimates that the state has fallen $5.6 billion short of its annual commitment to education funding. Several other lawsuits have been filed against the state’s education department.

“Our schools have been on a starvation diet,” said Moskop, whose school shares a gym, cafeteria, library, and playground with other schools in the area. “I consider it my moral obligation to serve students equally no matter where they come from, and I believe the governor has that same obligation.”