In 2018, Latino and Black families in New Jersey filed a lawsuit that landed like a gut punch to the state’s progressive reputation. Public schools in New Jersey were alarmingly segregated, the plaintiffs argued, in violation of the state Constitution.
The case kicked around in the courts for years before a judge released a decision in October that made neither side happy. The next step might have been a march toward trial and years of legal wrangling that would have been likely to push the problem to New Jersey’s next governor.
But late last year the state’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, opened the door to compromise. He suggested that the parties enlist a mediator and begin settlement talks, thrusting New Jersey into an inadvertent starring national role.
Cities in many states, including Connecticut, Minnesota and New York, are actively wrestling in courts and classrooms to improve racial integration within school districts, and, in some cases, broad regions. But no state has voluntarily sought a statewide remedy to segregation in the 70 years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed government sanctioned, racially separate schools.
The next mediation session is set for Friday, just as a new school year is beginning for New Jersey’s 1.4 million public school students.
The state’s negotiating team, led by the attorney general’s office and education department officials, has been in talks with the plaintiffs now for nearly 10 months. People with knowledge of the confidential discussions say they are nearing a pivotal moment and that success is far from certain.
The shake-up contemplated, according to legal filings, would be voluntary for families and would be likely to include a number of remedies, including an expansion of a program that lets a small number of children attend schools outside their home districts and adjustments to the state’s vocational school network. New magnet schools, based in cities with specialized curriculums, would be expected to attract an economically and racially diverse group of students from the surrounding region.
If implemented, the changes would reflect the most consequential shift in education policy in decades in a state already known for taking strides toward addressing school inequities. Spurred by a 1981 lawsuit, New Jersey has narrowed the funding gap between its richest and poorest districts and was the first state to mandate preschool education for at-risk students.
But it remains the seventh most segregated state for Black and Latino students, according to an April analysis by the Civil Rights Projects at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“What I find so exciting about New Jersey is it’s sending a powerful signal that money isn’t enough,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Striking a legally enforceable settlement would be only the first of many hurdles. State lawmakers would need to approve funds for any changes. And there would need to be buy-in from suburbanites, who are often willing to pay extraordinarily high housing costs primarily in exchange for high-performing, community-based public schools.
Still, the mediation itself has attracted the attention of education experts, who note the state’s potential to steer the national conversation at a time when meaningful debate over segregation has largely fallen out of vogue.
“If New Jersey can model a solution,” said Elise Boddie, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who studies systemic racism, “other states would sit up and take notice.”
It was a 2013 study by U.C.L.A.’s Civil Rights Project that first pushed the issue to the fore. New Jersey, with one of the country’s highest median household incomes, was also the sixth most segregated state in the nation for Black students and the seventh for Latino students, the study found.
Gary Orfield, an authority on school integration who founded and directs the Civil Rights Project, said the state is now in a “very powerful position.”
“To take some leadership on this,” he said, “would be important to the entire American educational system.”
The imbalance has only worsened in the decade since the study was released, according to the Education Law Center, a nonprofit that won a landmark 1981 lawsuit, Abbott v. Burke, that now requires New Jersey to equitably fund its poorest school districts. The student population in 31 school districts serving nearly 210,000 students is more than 90 percent Black, Latino or multiracial, according to the law center, which joined the desegregation lawsuit in February.
The mediator leading the talks, Barry T. Albin, a retired New Jersey Supreme Court justice, has ordered lawyers, plaintiffs and representatives from the attorney general’s office and the State Department of Education to keep the details of the negotiations secret.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat, would have to sign off on any agreed-upon settlement to the lawsuit, which was filed early in his first term by a coalition that includes the Latino Action Network, the N.A.A.C.P.’s state conference and the Urban League of Essex County. His spokesman declined to comment, citing the confidential negotiations.
Mr. Platkin and the plaintiffs’ main lawyer, Lawrence S. Lustberg, also declined to comment.
People who have participated in the closed-door mediation sessions say the conversations have been fruitful. But as the clock ticks down on Mr. Murphy’s second term, the window for reaching a settlement is narrowing.
“It’s a complicated issue,” said Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County.
“We didn’t get here overnight, and the systems that have created the segregation in the state — they’re still here,” she added, referring to income inequality, prejudicial lending and zoning laws and a shortage of affordable housing.
She said she remained hopeful, but noted the importance of cultivating a healthy conversation that reminds residents “it’s not a zero sum game.”
“Providing opportunity for my child doesn’t take away from your child,” she said.
New Jersey’s disproportionately high number of school districts also magnifies residential segregation. The small but densely packed state, with 9.3 million residents, operates 593 separate school districts — far more than states with similar populations. By comparison, Virginia, with 8.6 million residents, has 129 districts, resulting in a greater blend of students from large, often diverse geographic regions.
In October, Judge Robert T. Lougy of Mercer County Superior Court stopped well short of siding with the plaintiffs’ claim that New Jersey’s community residency requirements — blamed for the lopsided racial makeup of many districts — violated the state Constitution’s guarantee of a “thorough and efficient” education. But he also acknowledged striking disparities, and raised the specter of a court-ordered dismantling of residency requirements that can concentrate poverty within districts.
“While plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the entire system is constitutionally repugnant, that shortcoming may be a question of scale,” Judge Lougy wrote.
New Jersey is well versed in court-mandated desegregation efforts. Schools in Montclair were ordered to desegregate in 1968, leading to the creation of a largely successful magnet program that boosted diversity and helped to enhance the town’s property values. Three years later, the Morris School District formed after a court-ordered merger of the mostly white suburbs of Morris Township and the racially mixed urban hub of Morristown. The schools there are now considered a point of pride.
In 2000, New Jersey again tiptoed into the fray by creating a pilot program that permitted willing school districts to enroll students from other towns. It became a small but permanent option in 2010. Roughly 120 districts participate, and together enroll only about 5,000 out-of-town students — a number that has remained static since 2015, according to the State Department of Education.
Participants in the settlement talks readily admit the discussions could unravel at any moment, leading the parties back to court.
But the fact that the plaintiffs, Mr. Platkin and top Murphy administration officials have remained actively engaged in discussions since November has also generated a buzz of cautious optimism.
“This is not a blame situation,” said Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center. “This is a modern-day case that says: There is segregation, regardless of fault.”
“It’s an opportunity,” he added, “to leave a legacy centered on the notion that states and our elected officials can actually do the right thing and grapple with a pervasive and historically intractable issue and leave a mark that would reverberate beyond New Jersey.”
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