BY WALTER ELLIOTT
TRENTON – A seven-year-old public school segregation case whose outcome may affect the structure of the “Local Talk” area 11 districts and the other 663 across New Jersey is now back here in State Superior Court-Trenton since Feb. 18.
The respective sides in “Latino Action Network and NAACP State Conference v. New Jersey Department of Education et. al.” told State Superior Judge Robert T. Lougy that, after 15 months of negotiations, they have reached an impasse. Their mediation, headed by former State Supreme Court Associate Judge Barry T. Albin, has failed.
Lougy has meanwhile set an April 15 deadline for the plaintiffs and respondents to file their intentions to him. LAN, of Freehold, and the NAACP State Conference, of Trenton, as of press time, are leaning towards having the case be heard in his court as a trial.
It was Lougy who directed them to mediate after his preliminary ruling here Oct. 10, 2023. The judge, in his 99-page ruling, on one hand, agreed with the plaintiffs that “a marked and persistent racial imbalance” exists among the state’s public schools. Lougy, on the other hand, said that the plaintiffs had failed to prove that the said school districts are “unconstitutionally segregated because of race or ethnicity.”
LAN, NAACP-New Jersey, several individual students and parents filed suit against NJDOE and the State Board of Education in 2018. They contend that state educators had left a de facto (in effect) segregated public school system which violates New Jersey’s 1947 Constitution and keeps some students access to what the State Supreme Court calls “a thorough and efficient education.”
The plaintiffs cited the 2017’s: “New Jersey’s Segregated Schools; Tends and Paths Forward” by the Civil Rights Project. The study found that some public districts have 90-to-99 percent non-white student enrollment and some others the same percentage of white enrollment. A contemporary survey ranked New Jersey as the sixth most segregated state in the U.S. for African American students and seventh most for Hispanic or Latino students.
They plaintiffs assert that historic racial residential segregation and housing discrimination policies have led to imbalanced student body demographics and in property tax-fed school funding.
This is despite some 50 “Abbott v. Burke” court rulings over “thorough and efficient education,” zoning and property taxes. Student Raymond Abbott’s family sued State Education Commissioner Fred G. Burke over how Mt. Laurel’s school property taxes left him with a disproportionate educational disadvantage.
One Abbott v. Burke ruling established the Education Quality Act and designated 31 “neediest” school districts – including Newark, Irvington, East Orange and Orange – to receive state aid to correct instructional and infrastructural deficiencies.
The respondents – NJBOE and NJDOE – counter that racial segregation in some districts does not rise to the level of constitutional violation. The Abbott cases were based on students being required to enroll in their home districts with one and, after 1994, two exceptions.
The first exception is a student going out of the home district for special education. The other, for the last 30 years, is where the home public district sends 90 percent of a student’s tuition with the student to a receiving state-chartered school district.
New Jersey is among five states who have segregation discrimination cases before them. Another 200 cases are being circulated at the federal level. A 2020 Century Foundation study found over 700 public and charter districts either under a voluntary desegregation agreement or a desegregation order.
All of these cases, agreements and orders are happening while the U.S. Supreme Court “Brown v. Board of Education” ruling nears its 71st anniversary. The high court unanimously ruled on May 17, 1954 that segregating public school students by race were inherently unequal and ruled in favor of Rev. Oliver Brown’s family against the Topeka, Kan., BOE.
April 15 may not be the only deadline that this case faces, depending how long it continues to a resolution, starting with the Nov. 4 General Election.
That election’s voters will determine who will succeed the term-limited Phil Murphy (D-Rumson) as governor. There are currently six Democrats and four Republicans seeking their respective party voters’ nomination in the June 10 primaries. The governor, with State Legislature consent, chooses the education commissioner and state BOE members.
There may not be a U.S. Department of Education or a federal level Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy when “LAN and NAACP v. NJBOE and NJDOE” is settled.
President Donald J. Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate Feb. 20. McMahon is believed to supervise the abolition of the department (which still needs Congressional consent) and turn school aid funding and enforcement of civil rights over to the states.
Trump, since Jan. 20, has signed executive orders to abolish DEI policies among federal agencies and lay off relevant employees in favor of what he sees as “a meritocracy” in hiring and promotion. Other agencies and vendors dealing with the U.S. government are warned that not dismantling their DEI infrastructure would risk losing their funding and/or contracts.
Military branches have since dropped all ethnic, gender and other cultural awareness month observances. The National Park Service has removed “Transgender” names and references Feb. 13 from its Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Greenwich Village.
The “U.S. News and World” 2023-24 Education report lists “Local Talk” area public schools’ racial makeup percentages by “Black,” “Hispanic” and “White.” A fourth category – for Asian, Pacific Islander and Native American – had been combined for space consideration.
