would bring more
money to district
Lakewood appeal still pending on
request for Abbott designation
Reversal of ruling
would bring more
money to district
By joyce blay
Staff Writer
How much money should it cost to thoroughly and efficiently educate each and every public school child in Lakewood?
More than is currently funded by the state and taxpayers, say school district officials, who in 2000 joined a class action suit petitioning to be designated an Abbott district and therefore qualify for more money than they currently receive.
New Jersey’s so-called Abbott districts are the state’s poorest school systems and receive virtually all of their funding from the state, rather than from property taxpayers in the community. Lakewood is not an Abbott district.
"I don’t think there’s a district that has the population makeup that we do as it relates to minority population," said Chet Galdo, president of the Lakewood Board of Education. "We not only have to educate these kids, we have to also teach many of them English before we can teach them the core curriculum."
With the future of Lakewood’s neediest students at stake, being designated an Abbott district is paramount to ensuring their educational success, said Galdo.
"You take a district like Long Branch, only 3 or 4 square miles, [which] was given Abbott district designation," the board president said. "[It] now has a vast school construction [program with] the state funding 40 percent of the construction of four new schools."
Abbott district designation has in the past benefited other districts just as dramatically since it was first applied as a legal remedy several years ago. Lakewood and other municipalities involved in the action maintain that it would redress inequalities in their communities, too.
According to the original lawsuit filed in state Superior Court by petitioners in the Buena Vista Regional School District (Atlantic County) in 1997, that municipality was unable to meet its constitutional obligation under the Comprehensive Educational Improvement and Financing Act of 1996 to thoroughly and efficiently educate the children in the district due to lack of sufficient funding.
Lakewood and municipalities across the state asserted that they, too, fell into that category of need, and also petitioned for relief.
After the 17 parties involved came to an agreement, the court referred their complaints to the commissioner of education in February 1998, where the cases were heard together as a matter of convenience.
In February 2003, New Jersey Commissioner of Education William L. Librera made a decision resulting in some districts being deemed eligible for Abbott money. Lakewood was not among them.
Expert witness Dr. Gary W. Ritter, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, provided statistical data to the Office of Administrative Law, which made its recommendation to the commissioner in formulating a decision.
Ritter found that Lakewood’s market value base of $451,180 was well above the average of the 30 Abbott districts, and slightly over the state average of $424,270. Personal income per pupil, at $110,482, while somewhat below the state average, was still significantly higher than all of the Abbott averages.
The dropout rate of 5.5 percent among Lakewood’s 5,300 students who attend the K-12 district’s four elementary schools, one middle school and one high school was reported by Ritter to be lower than that of Abbott districts’ average, but higher than that of the state dropout average.
But the decision also found Lakewood to be a district plagued by fiscal mismanagement, which two years ago required a state bailout. Moreover, the township’s wealth is growing, but those to whom it is attributed are sending their children to private religious schools. Since the number of public school students remained static, state aid did not increase accordingly.
Given its property tax base, said the education commissioner, Lakewood is not incapable of providing a thorough and efficient education for its public school students. He said it must first show that it is spending its existing resources efficiently in order to qualify for Abbott status.
Librera maintained that the district’s $3.1 million courtesy busing program was not proof of that ability.
The district did not agree with Librera’s decision not to name it an Abbott district and promptly appealed, according to Richard Vespucci, press officer for the New Jersey Department of Education.
"Everybody has due process, including the Lakewood School District," he said.
The matter will now go to the state Board of Education appeals office, a quasi-judicial body with 13 members, which accepted the petition on the board’s behalf. That office assists the board in making its decision, said Vespucci.
"The board will review the case record and if it feels it needs additional information to arrive at a decision it will request it," he said. "The board can either uphold the commissioner’s decision, overturn it or modify it, which means they are essentially agreeing with the commissioner with some changes."
A state Board of Education decision is appealable to the Appellate Division of state Superior Court in Trenton, said Vespucci. From there, the case could go to the state Supreme Court and all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As to how long that process would take, Vespucci said there is no way to know.
"They want to be expeditious, but they also want to be thorough, which is the greater priority," he said. "Ideally, you try to be both, but realistically, you can’t always do that."
Lakewood is not without allies in its bid for Abbott district designation. On July 2, the state Board of Education approved a friend of the court brief that was filed by the Education Law Center, Newark, in support of the petition currently under appeal to the board.
More help may be on the way.
"The commissioner has been overseeing an advisory group of educators currently reviewing the state funding law with an eye toward making changes," said Vespucci. "The commissioner will be reviewing their recommendations in early 2004, but it is too early to tell if the recommendations will benefit school districts such as Lakewood."