NJ school segregation lawsuit parties want more time to negotiate before trial. Here's why

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit that alleges the state Department of Education is responsible for continuing de-facto — or incidental — segregation in New Jersey’s public schools are making progress in closed meetings with the state to settle their differences.

The negotiations followed a nuanced October ruling that said New Jersey’s schools are indeed segregated but that this did not amount to a “statewide” constitutional violation.

The lawsuit makes old memories fresh for civil rights organizer Vivian Cox Fraser, president of Newark-based Urban League of Essex County, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, which was first filed in 2018.

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Segregated schools were once a fact of everyday life for Fraser.

She recalled her first day in a new middle school. She took public transportation as a 12-year-old in 1971 in a busing program that took her into a district different from her own neighborhood in Mount Pleasant, in Washington D.C.

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That school, Alice Deal Middle school, was a shock to Fraser, whose grades were at the top of her elementary school. “I was unprepared for the academic challenge,” she said, and without any supports, it was “sink or swim” in the honors classes she thought she would fly through.

But the new district’s challenging environment forced Fraser to work harder, getting her through school and to Yale University.

“The new school changed my trajectory,” she recalled. “I was in an environment where even though I didn’t have the supports, it made me work hard. And learning that I had to work hard was important too.”

Parents in low-income areas are too busy surviving, and often don’t have as much time to advocate for their children like suburban families do, said Fraser, noting that was her experience as a young girl and an “outlier” who made it.

“Your ZIP code shouldn’t determine your future, but in fact it does,” Fraser said. “It’s certainly clear that the education of a parent, and the income of a parent is a predictor of the child’s outcome.”

The Urban League of Essex County’s work includes building affordable housing and providing wraparound supports to urban families. Kids in low-income communities have distinctive challenges, Fraser said, like walking by abandoned properties and down crime-ridden streets to get to school.

“When you talk about integrating schools, someone has to go through a different school system — but how will we do that? That’s the challenge we need to address collectively across race, religion, towns and boundaries,” she said.

More: Education Law Center joins lawsuit alleging segregation in NJ’s public schools

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Attorneys for the state and the plaintiffs have been discussing possible solutions to New Jersey’s school segregation problem in confidential mediation sessions since December, under the supervision of retired state Supreme Court Judge the Hon. Barry Albin.

Headway made in mediation sessions

They’ve made some headway, but it’s too early to predict a successful outcome. Both parties have asked presiding Judge Robert Lougy in Mercer County Superior Court to give them until April to continue discussions, in the hope of resolving differences and avoiding a long and expensive litigation, according to a report filed with the courts by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Lawrence Lustberg.

The mediation is confidential — the groups involved have a gag order preventing them from talking about what happens at the meetings. But in his letter to Lougy, Lustberg listed why he thinks the groups deserve an extension to continue conferring.

nj school segregation lawsuit parties want more time to negotiate before trial. here's why

“This is, in fact, the tragedy of this case: while we litigate, yet another generation of New Jersey’s children are being deprived of their constitutional right to be educated in an integrated setting,” said attorney Lawrence Lustberg, at left.

“The parties are systematically discussing possible measures that could further the parties’ jointobjective of remediating public school segregation, featuring presentations byexperts and lawyers deeply experienced in public education and reform initiatives,” he wrote.

The groups are also talking to each other outside the formal mediation sessions, indicating mutual interest in finding a solution. “The parties also regularly confer with each other and with the mediator between sessions, and they have had significant, good-faith discussions in furtherance of a possible resolution,” Lustberg wrote.

Groups involved with the lawsuit echoed Lustberg’s position.

Latino Action Network brought the lawsuit in 2018 with the NAACP, the Latino Coalition, the United Methodist Church of Greater New Jersey, the Urban League of Essex County and two Jersey Shore school districts. Since then, others have joined the suit.

The New Jersey Charter Schools Association challenged the plaintiffs’ argument that charter schools, which enroll large numbers of Black, Hispanic and low-income students from outside district boundaries, were part of the problem.

Lougy struck down that charge, saying that while charters contributed to segregation, they did not make it worse.

The Education Law Center, a longtime school funding and legal advocacy group, recently joined Latino Action Network and the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff.

Judge said state has duty to address school segregation

In his ruling, Judge Lougy agreed that the state has a constitutional duty to address segregation in public schools, but he also said that the plaintiffs failed “to prove that the state’s entire educational system is unconstitutionally segregated.”

His ruling disappointed some plaintiffs who had hoped for a more sweeping judgment in their favor.

The plaintiffs had argued that the state’s residency laws, which require kids to attend schools in their ZIP code, were feeding and worsening segregation in the state’s 600 or so districts, which vary widely in terms of economic wealth and racial diversity.

The state argued back, saying that a ruling favoring the plaintiffs would “obliterate” the state’s current method of assigning children to schools and shake up the entire system.

“We see the intersection of race, poverty and opportunity in our communities,” Fraser said. “And a lot of it starts with where people live. We’ve seen segregation become more entrenched. We celebrate the diversity in our streets — why don’t we see it in our schools? Why don’t our children learn in global environments?”

“I’m excited about the potential for the lawsuit, but I’m not naive to the politics,” she said.

Three main remedies

There are three main remedies that New Jersey could implement, and are likely under consideration, according to options presented in the original legal complaint.

Interdistrict choice plans, which would give Black and Hispanic students the option of transferring to schools outside their districts, could relocate thousands of children from their municipalities to schools in other districts, the plaintiffs recommended in the lawsuit. These programs usually involve a lottery and long waiting lists, but have been implemented in many states, including in Hartford, Connecticut, and East Palo Alto, California.

Interdistrict enrollment in themed magnet schools is another option. These programs create schools with specialized themes, incentivizing families of different races and income levels to let their children attend schools outside their neighborhoods.

A third option, regional controlled choice, works by broadening districts to include areas that are more diverse in income and race, and implementing an assignment method that considers individual preferences within the goal of achieving more integrated schools.

New Jersey has provisions in place that could consolidate individual districts into larger ones, or expand smaller district boundaries, as well as an existing Interdistrict Public School Choice program, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit says that the state violates its own constitution by preventing students impacted by de-facto segregation from receiving a “thorough and efficient” education and equal protection under law.

Studies indicate New Jersey’s schools are among the most segregated in the nation, with the fifth highest level of segregation among Black students and the fourth highest level among Hispanic students, the Education Law Center said in a statement.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ school segregation lawsuit parties want more time to negotiate before trial. Here’s why

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