Court rules district must share cost of girl’s special education tuition
By: Eric Schwarz
The school district must repay about $36,000 to the Somerville school district for a special-education student’s tuition because the student’s parents, one of whom lives in Manville and the other in Somerville, share custody, a court has ruled.
The ruling is the first to decide that two school districts can be considered "domiciles" for the purpose of determining tuition responsibility.
The Superior Court Appellate Division called the question "novel" and the case "an issue of first impression," meaning a substantially similar case had never been decided before.
The Superior Court Appellate Division sent the case back to the Law Division in Somerville to determine the payment.
J. Ronald Gossett, Manville school board secretary and business administrator, estimated the payment at $36,000 based on a year and a half of back payments through the end of the 1999-2000 school year.
Manville Schools Superintendent Francis X. Heelan on June 14 said the payment would come from the district’s special education account. He said the case has been in litigation for about three years.
Dr. Heelan said the cost of special-education tuition is hard to determine, and that the ruling "certainly wouldn’t help our estimate." He said the payment to Somerville would depend on whether funds are available.
"If we don’t have it, they can’t have it," Dr. Heelan said.
Dr. Heelan referred some questions about the lawsuit to the district’s attorney, David W. Trombadore, who generally declined comment until he gets the board’s reaction. The board is expected to decide Tuesday (June 20) whether to appeal the decision; it has until July 3 to appeal.
The state Department of Education had sided with Manville, holding that only one domicile is possible at one time, and that "educational continuity" required that Somerville continue to provide the girl’s education.
But three judges in the Appellate Division disagreed. In a decision filed June 13, they reversed an earlier decision in favor of Manville that Somerville should pay all the costs.
Judges David S. Baime, Naomi G. Eichen and Barbara Byrd Wecker said, "Fairness dictates that both school districts bear equally the costs of the child’s special education."
The student, now 16, was classified as neurologically impaired in 1989 and attends Midland School in Branchburg. She lived in Somerville with her parents and was enrolled in school in Somerville until 1993, when she began school at Midland. The student and her parents are not identified in the ruling, as is customary with special-education students.
The parents divorced in 1990. Their divorce judgment provides for joint legal and physical custody, and the child had lived with each parent in alternating weeks. The mother has lived in Manville since the divorce, while the father continues to live in the home they shared in Somerville.
Before the girl was enrolled at Midland, the directors of special services in both boroughs agreed orally to pay the tuition on an alternating-year basis. Somerville paid the tuition in 1993-94, 1995-96 and 1997-98, while Manville paid the tuition for 1994-95 and part of the 1996-97 school years.
In November 1996 a new director of special services in Manville determined that Manville should not continue to pay the tuition because the girl did not live there. Somerville then sued Manville through a law firm in Florham Park, Schwartz Simon Edelstein Celso & Kessler LLP. Manville countersued, seeking reimbursement of sums previously paid for tuition at Midland.
Manville previously had agreed to pay the balance of the child’s 1995-96 tuition and accepted its denial of reimbursement.
The Appellate Court rejected the Department of Education’s argument that "cost-sharing poses a significant risk of future disagreements on the child’s placement and therefor on her educational continuity." The judges said the two districts had no problem agreeing on where the girl should be placed and that both districts could meet with parents, teachers and others to determine her placement in the future.
Allan Dwilewski, one of two lawyers for Somerville working on the case, noted that the case was argued before the Appellate Division twice, which is unusual.
After the second argument, the Department of Education essentially threw its hands up in the air, writing a proposed code saying such joint custody situations "make it difficult to codify uniformly applicable standards."
On the Web: The Appellate Court decision is available at http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/a6826-97.htm
The state Department of Education memo regarding domicile is available at http://199.20.64.195/njded/proposed/dpres.htm