By A. Lang. Future litigation over increased state aid to Lakewood public schools will necessarily focus on our “municipal overburden.” Lakewood lost in 2002 because it claimed “that it must support the cost of the courtesy busing it has chosen to provide while seeking additional funds to support educational programming for its public school students.”[1] The commissioner should have studied Robinson and Abbott a little better.
Firstly, in the original Abbott decision, Judge Lefelt was swayed by the municipal overburden of the Abbott districts, causing “fiscal pressures and political conflict which inhibits the ability of poor urban school districts to address fully the educational needs of their students.”[2]
Abbott described Newark, Paterson, Camden and Jersey City, in which residents have to pay a couple of hundred dollars more than average for police, fire and sanitation. The de jure overburden in Abbott, de jure since it was an overburden imposed by the government, of paying an extra few hundred dollars per family for municipal services, pales in comparison, to the de facto overburden in Lakewood, de facto since it is communal rather than official, but not a choice nonetheless, of paying tens of thousands of dollars, not for a municipal service, but for the education of its children. Whatever the cause, municipal overburden “is a factual conclusion.”[3]
The provision of education for 22,000 children inhibits Lakewood householders from appropriating more than their local fair share when they go to the polls. Their education is certainly one of the “essential services [that] must also be met out of the same tax base and the total demands exceed what the local taxpayers are willing or able to endure.”[4]
Secondly, if the municipal overburden for police and fire services in the Abbott districts were reduced or eliminated, the voters presumably would have supported more funding for education. By contrast, if Lakewood eliminated transportation, the funds would have simply returned to the taxpayer. Either the municipality or the parents would have picked up the burden. Once eliminated, the commissioner does not have the authority to order the funds restored to the school budget as long as the local fair share has been met. . The money spent on busing in no way even indirectly “deprive[d] the local school system of necessary teaching staffs and physical facilities.”[5]
Lakewood was patronized as if it was seeking tax relief by passing the cost of transportation onto the state and did not know that the “T[horough] & E[fficient] constitutional mandate does not protect taxpayers.”[6] It was not the plaintiff district, but the DOE that misunderstood Abbott.
Consider that the state argued for years that the Abbott districts were wasting money for education, much of it ending up in the pockets of politicians. The schools were not entitled to more state aid in Abbott, the state argued, since the districts could recover the waste with better management. The NJ Supreme Court “rejected the argument, however, that funding should not be supplied because it may be mismanaged and wasted.”[7]
There is little legal difference between the “unnecessary” expense for transportation of students, essential to the voting citizens of Lakewood, and the unnecessary waste in Abbott, essential to no one, as a legal ground for ignoring the plight of the public school students.
Finally, Abbott was about the children. Chief Justice Wilentz could have easily been describing the public school children of Lakewood and their need for more adequate state aid. “They live in a culture where schools, studying, and homework are secondary. Their test scores, their dropout rate, their attendance at college, all indicate a severe failure. . . .”[8]
These were the losers in 2002, not the taxpayers. The commissioner lost sight of that fact. State aid for adequate education would not have decreased or increased the burden of the taxpayer, but it would have helped the public school children.
Mr. Lang perhaps should be hired by Lakewood BOE at least as a consultant to work with the Attorneys in receiving our fair share of State funding.
with all due respect , why are we providing bussing “courtesy’ bussing to private schools? when i was in school a private school that was part of my tuition !! whay is it being provided for free and in essance bank rupting the public schools . Isnt that what this judge orig ruled ? i am a bit confused
this whole town will be bankrupt by 2015.
hmmmmm: read it again – courtesy busing is a budget add-on, if it were removed, the budget would be reduced accordingly, without any additional $ going to the public school.
someone should do a study of what traffic in lakewood would look like without courtesy busing .
the would have to quadruple the roads infrastructure to make it possible,
It would probably cost more to redo the roads in this town to make it possible not to give courtesy busing than what the courtesy busing is costing.
Hello do you want them in pub school and pay for it. So be happy its only trans
The citations got jumbled in publishing, Here are the correct citations:
1) Bacon v. N.J. Dep’t of Educ., OAL DKT NOS. EDU 2637-00–2656-00 (N.J. Adm. Sept. 23, 2002).
2) Abbott v. Burke, OAL DKT. NO. EDU 5581-85 p. 505 (1988).
3) Abbott II, 119 N.J. 287, 357 (June 1990).
4) Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 499 (N.J. 1973).
5) Bd of Educ. of East Brunswick Tp. v. Township Council of East Brunswick Tp., 223 A.2d 481, 481 (1966).
6) Stubaus v. Whitman, 339 N.J. Super. 38, 56 (App. Div. 2001).
7) Abbott v. Burke (Abbott II), 119 N.J. 287, 295 (N.J. 1990).
8 ) Id.
Is this the Aaron Lang who used to teach in Belmar? Brilliant guy and right on the money!
so now if it is a add on to the budget that means the tax payers are directly paying for this transportation ???? just trying to understand this
State aid comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket as well. Governments, whether they be municipal, county, state, or federal do not create and then distribute wealth. Wealth is confiscated from the creators in the form of taxes. Whether the taxpayer pays for schools through municipal property taxes, state income taxes, federal income taxes, or sales taxes, it’s the same taxpayer’s pocket that is being picked.
To number 6, it might be a blessing if they all attended the public schools, because then the state would have to really give more money.! So please don’t make the threat when u all know that would never happen! Have a great day
Just left Lakewood today
I will not miss it.
#4 & #5 well said