TRENTON — In 1875, in an effort to get control of a patchwork public school system, the New Jersey state Legislature amended New Jersey’s constitution and made it the state’s responsibility to provide a "thorough and efficient system of free public schools." For more than 100 years since, the state’s courts and elected officials have wrestled with those eight...
A view of the exterior of the Statehouse in Trenton in this 2005 file photo.TRENTON — In 1875, in an effort to get control of a patchwork public school system, the New Jersey state Legislature amended New Jersey’s constitution and made it the state’s responsibility to provide a "thorough and efficient system of free public schools."
For more than 100 years since, the state’s courts and elected officials have wrestled with those eight words.
The participants and dollar amounts have changed over the years, but the issue has largely been the same: how to give children in New Jersey’s poorest cities the same level of education as those in its wealthiest communities.
The state Supreme Court took another stab at the issue Tuesday, ordering the state to increase school funding to poor districts by $500 million. Here is a look back at decisions leading up to Tuesday.
1973: Robinson v. Cahill, the first major state Supreme Court decision on school funding. The Court decides the state’s heavy reliance on property taxes to fund schools discriminates against students in poor communities.
"Education serves too important a function to leave it also to the mood — in some cases the low aspirations — of the taxpayers of a given district," the Court found. "...The present system of financing public elementary and secondary schools in New Jersey violates the requirements for equality contained in the state and federal constitutions."
1985: The first Abbott v. Burke lawsuit, filed on behalf of 20 inner-city school children, is decided. The court finds urban children receive "inadequate" school funding, and says they must be given an education equal in quality to that in the state’s wealthiest districts.
"In some cases, for disadvantaged students to receive a thorough and efficient education, the students will require above-average access to education resources," the court wrote.
1990: Abbott v. Burke 2. The court strikes down the first of three funding formulas that it will declare unconstitutional over the years.
The court said the "record proves what all suspect: that if the children of poorer districts went to school today in richer ones, educationally they would be a lot better off."
The justices also commented that failure in some schools, has a wider impact.
"The fact is that a large part of our society is disintegrating, so large a part that it cannot help but affect the rest," the court wrote. "Everyone’s future is at stake, and not just the poor’s."
1997: The state’s core curriculum content standards are defined, but another school law is struck down because it does not provide enough money to attain the standards.
"Our Constitution demands that every child be given an equal opportunity to meet his or her promise. (The formula) is deficient in that it does not provide adequate resources to help the most educationally deprived children to achieve that promise, or to effect change in our most needy schools," the court found.
The following year, the court mandates that poor districts — called "Abbott districts," after the court case — get access to a series of specific programs including funding for new school construction and preschool.
2009: The Supreme Court upholds a new funding formula, this one proposed by Gov. Jon Corzine in 2007. The School Funding Reform Act directs that additional funding resources go to any districts with disadvantaged students, not just the Abbotts.
The court set an important condition, however: "Our finding of constitutionality is premised on the expectation that the state will continue to provide school funding aid during this and the next two years at the levels required by SFRA’s formula each year."
"A state funding formula’s constitutionality is not an occurrence at a moment in time; it is a continuing obligation," the court wrote.
2010: In the wake of about $1 billion in school aid cuts by Gov. Chris Christie, the Education Law Center files a legal challenge to the Supreme Court saying the cuts "indisputably violated" the state’s legal obligation to fully fund the school formula.
Early this year, Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne, appointed as Special Master in the case, holds hearings. He writes that "how money is spent is much more important than how much money is spent," but nevertheless determines the schools — and in particular, the poorest schools — were shortchanged.
"Despite spending levels that meet or exceed virtually every state in the country, and that saw a significant increase in spending levels from 2000 to 2008, our ‘at-risk’ children are now moving further from proficiency," Doyne said.
The stage was set for Tuesday’s ruling — 30 years after the first Abbott lawsuit was filed.