If people can afford the thirteen thousand in property taxes on my home, they are welcome to my neighborhood. If they can't, they should look for more affordable options.
43
I lived in New Jersey for twenty years, and both my children went to school there. They were active in sports and over the years we met quite a few people in the different communities.
In my experience, the system of local control, with funding through property tax and state assistance, is responsible for the generally high quality of New Jersey’s public schools. It ensures that school boards are responsive to the wishes of the parents, and that school officials are properly supervised. The spending per pupil in the public system is relatively uniform across the state, with more money typically being spent in the poorer districts where state assistance plays a large role.
The problem in the poorer districts is that too many parents are disengaged from their children’s upbringing, and their children arrive at school with educational and behavioral deficits that take time and money to address. If we agree collectively that the time and money should be spent, then this has to come from everyone’s pocket, and all of us have a stake in spending it effectively. If we’re serious though, and want to get beyond the social justice posturing so popular in certain circles, we need to address the root cause. This, to put it bluntly, means family planning, support for poor mothers and fathers, and early education for their children.
What comes out of the schools is highly dependent on what goes into them, and what goes into them can’t be addressed by these kind of lawsuits.
65
I grew up in the SF Bay Area (Silicon Gulch as it was becoming so) and went through this in the 70s. None of the arguments here are new. Nor is it clear what the outcomes will be.
But the hysteria and "you'll destroy my property value" is racist bunk.
20
Bussing kids around for the express purpose of tweaking demographics in the school only angers people. Why not push for more diverse housing stock in each town and let the schools diversify organically if the goal is to have a greater variety of skin tones in each school? Now, whether that will actually have a beneficial academic effect, that's a different story. Keep an eye on the South Orange-Maplewood school district's integration efforts to have a glimpse of NJ's possible future.
23
A good start would be to dissolve the 600+ school districts and let the 21 counties run the schools. I know this would never happened, but it would solve lots of problems including property taxes. How much would be saved by axing thousands of duplicate district administrators?
32
My hometown of Plainfield, New Jersey, where I attended public school, has a long and fascinating history, including the 1967 riots and the epic effort to desegregate in the early 1960's. The economic and concomitant psychological consequences of racism in this community cannot be underestimated.
15
This is the death of public schools in NJ and will result in the rapid decline of property values. Great way to further hurt the residents of a state already straddled with outrageously high property and income taxes.
Many families who are perceived to be "wealthy" stretch their budgets and make significant financial sacrifices to move to towns in NJ with excellent school systems. These families often only live in these towns while their children are of school age and move out as soon as their children graduate with the understanding that their home will likely sell quickly and most certainly not for less than what they paid for it.
Eliminating or significantly altering the relationship between town and school will have far reaching detrimental effects on homeowners and, ultimately, on students as those with means will send their children to private school or simply move out of the state.
36
The caption, "The school district covering Morristown and Morris Township in New Jersey is one of the few deliberately integrated districts in the state." doesn't begin to tell the whole story of this area. Neither does the December 12, 2016 NYT's piece, "As Other Districts Grapple With Segregation, This One Makes Integration Work" which has the laughable statement, "at the high school level, neighboring Morris Plains, one of the region’s richest communities, also funnels its students into the school." "Richest" here translates to "whitest". And while, theoretically, the district funnels its children to Morristown High School, like most small insular communities in New Jersey, when it comes time for high school, private schools win out over public.
16
I admit that I was initially shocked until it dawned on me that those communities with highest ratables and thus the highest property taxes often have the best educational systems. I wonder what the blow back will be from those very nice communities when access to their systems becomes potentially available to those families who are not residents.
9
The quality of PUBLIC schools being tied to local taxes, hmm. And you don't see a problem with that?
11
This certainly smacks of a solution looking for a problem. Whether a school is 100% black or 100% white clearly has no bearing on how well the school does. If that were the case than the 100% black and Hispanic charter schools in NYC would not be the models of excellence that they are, far outperforming most of the integrated NYC and suburban public schools. Schools that are 80, 90 or 100% minority are often bad schools, but that's not because of the racial makeup of the school; it's because of all the reasons any school is bad --- bad teachers, a bad principal, a lack of discipline enforcement, a terrible curriculum that leaves the kids learning little or nothing, poorly maintained facilities, etc.
This line from the story is clearly wrong: 'Children who attend integrated schools do better than those that remain in segregated schools, research shows.' The writer is confusing cause and effect. Children going from a segregated school to an integrated school are probably going from a bad school to a better school. That explains why they do better, not the racial makeup of their new school. If that sentence in the story is correct, then what explains kids going from 50, 60 or 70% minority schools to a 100% minority charter school and doing much better?
26
People who can afford to chose neighborhoods with good schools. If their children are forced to go elsewhere the parents will send their kids to private school or if they cant afford that move. So nothing positive will be accomplished by this foolish lawsuit.
28
Yes, splitting up friends and forcing them to take 30-minute bus rids instead of walking to school will certainly do the trick.
41
As this article relates, there is a problem in getting quality education for students attending schools predominantly in minority neighborhoods. The schools usually have low funding for everything. And this problem has been around since before the middle of the last century.
But curiously the solution proposed is always the same: force people ship their children around like cargo out of their own neighborhood and into other schools. Wouldn't it be easier simply to bring the funding level for minority schools to the same level as white schools?
Or is there some other problem at work here that the proponents of identify politics are trying to address?
Why is bussing the solution? Desegregation is use of force by the state to make children of different neighborhoods learn together, in violation of the property rights of parents to choose the property cost, tax level, and school district of their choice.
14
The schools with the highest minority populations are always among the districts with the highest level of funding. Plainfield isn't "bad" because it doesn't have money to be good. And Westfield isn't "good" because it has more money in its budget. In fact, in next year's budgets, Plainfield plans to spend $16,236 per pupil and Westfield plans to spend $15,209.
39
This lawsuit offers a glimmer of hope for New Jersey's public schools and students, and I hope it succeeds. I am sorry to say, though, that this effort to desegregate education will run into a buzzsaw of opposition from many affluent and white suburbanites. We will see....
13
Until school funding is separated from property taxes, nothing will change. As a NJ resident living in an area with very strong schools, residents here overwhelmingly pass legislation that expands/upgrades our schools, realizing correctly that home values are very much a part of the school system. They do this despite the fact that their property taxes will increase. Homes in my neighborhood remain in demand because of the schools, and usually sell in a matter of days. Small homes frequently are priced at or near the one million dollar mark. Should our schools deteriorate, so will the value of our homes. The property taxes feed into and reinforce the segregation. Separating funding from property taxes will desegregate schools, but it will also weaken them, and would be opposed by nearly everyone in areas with strong schools. Rather than weakening strong schools, increased taxes to upgrade weaker schools is warranted. This would means teachers with credentials in the areas/subject matter in which they teach, smaller classrooms, school/community partnerships, subsidized after school programming at the school, and identifying and counseling students who are at risk early, among other things - things that cost money. And parents must be involved in the school, which means the school must adapt to parent work schedules. Real desegregation can only happen with targeted funding, something few states are prepared to undertake.
20
Chris Christie tried to force school districts to merge, and when that failed, he put in a new layer of oversight at the county level. The merger plan was sold as a way to save money, but what the county plan did (aside from cost more) was create a new political power center of people beholden to the party that hired them. Local school board members are technically non-partisan, and do not run as part of a D or R ticket. It drove Christie crazy that he couldn't control the schools through political patronage.
This article also neglects to mention that districts currently may accept students from other districts, if they want to.
17
"Segregation", the de facto kind, is a term that we could well do without. The word itself denotes a racial imbalance that results from deliberate policies designed to produce that outcome. As such, it has traditionally been considered odious. If the reported imbalances in New Jersey came about because of zoning policies (assuming they were not based on race, which would be illegal), poverty, and personal choice, they were not deliberate.
The use of the term constitutes a serious accusation against officials and others who may be entirely innocent of any racial animus. There is a tendency these days to introduce moral judgments indiscriminately where they are entirely inappropriate. Unless we wish to pursue such accusations, we should stick to the neutral descriptive term "racial imbalance".
36
The NJ constitution prohibits segregation in public schools, but does not require integration. The Times might want to discuss this.
33
In the 1970 Census New Jersey was 85% non-Hispanic white, in the 2010 Census it was 59% non-Hispanic white. It'll probably drop to 50% by 2020 Census.
The state is running out of white people. The notion that people can't choose where to live and that some activist or academic can overrun their choice through the courts is ridiculous.
53
The only way to stop segregation is to remove school funding and administration from local districts and place it under the State government.
As long as the children across a state receive unequal educational resources based on where they live, that state is in violation of the edict of Brown v. Board of Education.
And private school tuition should be subject to a hefty excise tax...
11
As someone who teaches in one of these poorer districts, the state has charge of districts for some time & it's nothing but chaos.
Newark, Paterson, Jersey City all had over 25 years of state control & nothing got any better.
A large part of this would be solved if we stopped requiring residency in a district and/or consolidate all the towns into one county district. There are many bright kids in my district who can't afford to live in other areas w/ better resources.
Towns have made a point of monitoring families they suspect of not living within their borders & sending them whopping bills at the end of the year to cover costs. Too often its sent to people who can little afford 5k tuition bill for public school.
The minute we allow kids to go to school anywhere in the state, the better this will be.
However, race always plays an issue. Where I went to H.S. we had White parents fighting for well over a decade to get their kids out of my majority minority H.S. where they were being bussed in (their town is too tiny to support a H.S.).
The kids were fine, we all got along. But the parents? They swore that they were being failed educationally and being picked on because they were not the majority & insisted the state allow them to enroll in the town next door's H.S; which was all White & Asian.
Thankfully, the courts said no, this is where you're kids attend public school. If you don't like it, put them in private school. Many did.
10
Thanks for your input knowing absolutely nothing about New Jersey. There is a very large excise tax on private school, your property tax, which you are required to pay regardless of where your children go to school. Please don't make private school any more expensive then it is now, those students will simply move to public school and make property taxes go up even more!! Bad bad bad idea.
17
New Jersey has a long history of home-rule. It affects government at the state level by concentrating governance power at the local and county levels. One of the main reasons it lasts is people simply like it- and not just wealthy communities. I would say every community has a preference for home-rule. When asked to choose between the benefits of consolidation and economy of scale over home-rule, people in NJ have traditionally favored local control.
24
Home rule has cost NJ taxpayers dearly. Don't complain about high r/e taxes when HR is its major cause. I won't live to see it but one day our county will have one school district, one police force, one dept. for tax collection/assessment, etc. get the idea. Perhaps then we will have a less segregated school system and more efficient tax base.
6
If that day ever comes, imagine the explosion in costs. Imagine the waste and corruption that could be hidden in a giant county-wide government, rather than a small town where the government is much closer to the people than faraway Hackensack. And the lack of competition among towns will only drive property taxes up. Now the lower taxes in some towns keep the higher-tax towns next door a bit honest. That would end. And common sense tells you bigger governments aren't cheaper. Who spends the most money? the biggest cities in NJ. Who runs the most efficient, cost-effective governments? the smaller towns and cities around the state. A study from the U of Pittsburgh said that 15,000 is the ideal population for a municipal government to oversee. That sounds about right.