NJ wants financial review of Lakewood Schools after court orders more funding

TRENTON – State education officials plan to launch a new review of Lakewood Schools finances before committing to a court-ordered plan to improve state funding, a move school advocates call a delaying tactic.

“Once the expedited comprehensive review is complete,” Acting State Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan wrote in a letter May 12. “The (state education) department will be better equipped on how best to ensure that Lakewood’s public school students receive the necessary education required by our state’s constitution.”

Allen-McMillan’s letter to plaintiff attorneys in a related lawsuit is a response to a March state appeals court ruling that found Lakewood public schools do not receive adequate state funding to meet their needs. The appeals court declared that the district is “severely strained” by its obligation to provide transportation and special education to thousands of non-public school students.

More: Lakewood Schools deserve more state funding for busing students, appeals court rules

The appeals court decision relates to the 9-year-old Alcantara case, a lawsuit filed by attorney Arthur Lang, a Lakewood High School teacher, and co-counsel Paul Tractenberg, a former Rutgers law professor and founder of the Education Law Center.

Their complaint challenged the state’s funding of the 6,000-student district, claiming the district’s legal obligation to provide transportation and other services to more than 30,000 nonpublic school students required more state aid.

In the decision handed down March 6, the three-person appellate court declared that Allen-McMillan must review the district’s situation and come up with a way to improve its funding.

But it did not include a deadline or a more detailed requirement for how to proceed.

Tractenberg said Tuesday that the commissioner’s call for a new review is simply a way to “kick the can down the road.”

“It’s going to take a long time and what if she concludes that things have improved and we have to appeal that again and it goes round and round,” Tractenberg said about the commissioner’s latest decision. “It is like a loop. It’s a prescription for perpetual delay.”

Lakewood Board of Education Attorney and spokesman Michael Inzelbuch and Lakewood Superintendent Laura Winters did not respond to requests for comment.

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In the letter to Tractenberg and Lang, Allen-McMillan argued that the current data related to the case only goes up to the 2018-2019 school years, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic that affected both school funding and practices.

She contends more updated research is needed to properly create a new formula for Lakewood state aid in the future.

“Because this information is now outdated and the subsequent intervening years will have revealed additional relevant and informative data, coupled with the fact that there have been unprecedented changes in the field of education as a byproduct of the Covid-19 pandemic, an updated record is required in order to make an appropriately informed decision about (school funding) and its application to Lakewood,” the commissioner’s letter stated.

But Tractenberg said the move was a way to push off a true state aid improvement and planned to file a motion asking for a more expedited plan and a specific schedule for the commissioner to act.

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“We are going to ask for, in our motion, that the court should retain jurisdiction over the case and decide the question itself,” Tractenberg said. “It is really a legal constitutional question, not a school question. Is the School Funding Reform Act legally accountable and responsible for denying Lakewood kids a thorough and efficient education?”

Two years ago, an administrative law judge ruled in the case that Lakewood public school students were not receiving a “thorough and efficient” education.

In a nonbinding decision, Judge Susan Scarola recommended in that 2021 ruling that Allen-McMillan conduct a needs assessment of the school district's ability to meet its obligations and make "appropriate recommendations to the district."

The decision did not require the commissioner to make any changes, but gave her support for pursuing a study and altering Lakewood’s state aid if needed.

In July 2021, the commissioner acknowledged a review of the district’s educational programs and funding situation had been conducted, but she said it did not provide any evidence that changes were needed in funding or that students were not receiving the proper education as required by law.

Six months later, Lang and Tractenberg appealed Allen-McMillan’s decision not to seek changes in the funding formula.

The sticking point for Lang and other funding advocates has been how Lakewood’s state funding is assessed given its unusual situation as a public school district that serves tens of thousands of nonpublic students who live in the community.

The district has had annual budget deficits in recent years that have forced administrators to take out tens of millions of dollars in state loans, including a request for a $93 million loan to meet expenses in the coming school year.

The district still owes more than $137 million in state loans dating to the 2014-15 school year when $4.5 million was borrowed.

The state funding formula, which broadly sets each district’s needs based on overall public school enrollment and assessed wealth in each district, has failed to provide Lakewood with its true need, Lang and other experts contend.

The key reason: more than 30,000 nonpublic students rely on the public school district for many services, most importantly busing.

The Court of Appeals ruling in March supported that contention.

“Lakewood is an outlier amongst other New Jersey school districts, in which most students are enrolled in public schools,” the court stated. “The non-public school students in Lakewood constitute nearly a quarter of all such students in our state.”

In a 22-page response to Scarola’s initial ruling filed in April 2021, Inzelbuch objected to the finding that a proper education was not being provided: “The information and decision summarily ignores the significant progress made during this period and the progress made while the initial decision was pending for several years.”

Inzelbuch argued that the case should have been reopened so that the district could provide more information, while also objecting to the claim that the state funding formula was not problematic.

District officials filed their own lawsuit in 2019 claiming the state funding formula discriminated against students and failed to provide $30 million in necessary aid that year, but that case was dismissed in 2020.

Joe Strupp is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience who covers education and several local communities for APP.com and the Asbury Park Press. He is also the author of three books, including Killing Journalism on the state of the news media, and an adjunct media professor at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Reach him at jstrupp@gannettnj.com and at 732-413-3840. Follow him on Twitter at @joestrupp

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Court says Lakewood deserves more aid, NJ wants financial review