North Haledon must remain in the Manchester Regional School District, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, but the district's funding formula must be retooled.

The ruling ends the borough's attempt to withdraw from the district, but it portends lower school taxes for its residents.

The court's decision, written by Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, found that while North Haledon's attempt to withdraw was not racially motivated, students from all three sending districts would suffer from the reduced diversity that would result from North Haledon's departure.

"This decision's going to have a statewide impact," said Vito Gagliardi Jr., the attorney who argued the case for North Haledon. "North Haledon is not the only community in the state in a regional district that is being asked to shoulder a greatly disproportionate tax burden."

Paul Tractenberg, professor of law and founding director of the Institute on Education Law and Policy at Rutgers University Law School in Newark, said the ruling recognized both the importance of racial diversity in education and the fact that New Jersey is failing to provide that diversity in its public schools.

"The court seems to be running out of patience with the gap between the constitutional requirements and the reality on the ground," Tractenberg said.

"It would appear from reading the opinion that everybody ended with something," Manchester Superintendent Ray Kwak said. "Hopefully, now we can move beyond this."

North Haledon residents have overwhelmingly supported withdrawal from the district since the mid-1990s, and some said they were let down and discouraged by the ruling.

"It's disappointing, obviously," said Melissa Markham, a North Haledon parent and co-president of the Parent-Teacher Organization.

"I'm sorry that they went with the racial issue of it. That was never an issue for our town. It was the tax issue."

Markham said she and her husband will have to make a hard decision when their 4- and 8-year-old sons are ready for high school.

"I think a lot of people will be putting up [For sale] signs because of this," she said.

Details about how North Haledon, Haledon, and Prospect Park will divide the funding burden will be determined by the state education commissioner in consultation with the towns.

The court gave no directions about how or when a new funding formula should be developed, but the Education Department will "act as the court directed," spokesman Jon Zlock said.

Before the ruling, North Haledon's share of the tax levy to support Manchester's budget was 43.8 percent, while Haledon's was 36.2 percent, and Prospect Park's was 19.8 percent. North Haledon students make up about a quarter of Manchester's student body.

The case is not the only one in which residents and officials from richer towns are questioning whether per-pupil costs for regional school district are fairly split.

The issue has boiled over in Oradell, which sends its high school students to River Dell High School. In June, a council vote urged the school board to put the funding issue to voters in a referendum next spring. Oradell pays $18,750 per student, and neighboring River Edge pays $12,250.

Similarly unequal bills are sent to taxpayers in Franklin Lakes, Carlstadt, and Upper Saddle River.

North Haledon Mayor Randy George said he will push for a system in Manchester in which each town pays the same amount for each student.

"As far as I'm concerned, [the ruling is] a victory for the residents of North Haledon because the funding problem will have to be addressed," George said. "I'm willing to meet, and I think we should go back to the original funding formula, which is per-pupil."

Haledon and Prospect Park officials said they supported a fairer apportionment system for North Haledon and will work together to find an equitable formula.

"We're glad to have North Haledon as part of [the district] ... and we'll try to work out a settlement with the commissioner to settle a more equitable funding formula," said John Vander Molen, president of Manchester's board.

However, Prospect Park Mayor Will Kubofcik said a new funding formula must take into account incomes in Haledon and Prospect Park, not just tax relief for North Haledon.

Census figures show that in 2000, the median household income in North Haledon was $74,700. In Haledon, it was $45,599; in Prospect Park, $46,434.

Kubofcik said the ruling will result in higher taxes for his borough. He questioned why the court did not ask the Legislature to change the way school funding is apportioned statewide.

"I'm OK with the state commissioner [determining a new formula for Manchester], but at the same time we're going to be applying a different standard than the rest of the state," he said.

Jeffrey Fischer, a member of Manchester and Haledon school boards, said Haledon is likely to ask for more state aid to make up for the loss of funds from North Haledon if the district reverts to funding on a per-pupil basis.

Staff Writers Kathleen Carroll and Whitney Kvasager contributed to this article.

Let me get this straight, Gov. Whitman's Chief Justice appointee, Deborah Poritz, ruled that minority children can not learn properly unless white children are sitting next to them (figuratively) in class?

That's how I read this. What difference does it make that white students from N. Haledon attend neighboring Midland Park High School Rather than Manchester Regional School where they are going now? The matter is over the unfair tax levy, not skin color.

The tax-payers of North Haledon pay the bulk of the school taxes for Manchester Regional HS while they send the least amount of students of the 3 towns. They go to court over this and RINO Poritz rules that the minority children would suffer if some whites go to another school.

Can't Black, Hispanic and Arab students learn without whites in the classroom?

I just don't understand. If I were an ethnic/racial minority parent, I would be outraged at this, Poritz is calling my child dumb who can't learn with other students of the same race and need white people there to raise the standards because ours are low.

How can Asians and Caucasians learn without diversity and minorities can't?

Supreme Court

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

A-13-03 In the Matter of the Petition for Authorization to Conduct a Referendum on the Withdrawal of North Haledon School District from the Passaic County Manchester Regional High School District (Passaic County & Statewide) ( Argued 1/5/04)

Court rules racial mix imperative for schools

Justices reject pullout bid over concern for diversity

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Citing a "constitutional imperative to prevent segregation in our public schools," the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a school district may not withdraw from a regional high school if it would hasten racial imbalance.

Chief Justice Deborah Poritz said that in spite of the state's long-standing rejection of segregated schools, far too many minority students attend schools with few, if any, white classmates. She noted in the unanimous decision that a study earlier this year by the Civil Rights Project of Harvard University ranked New Jersey's schools the fifth most-segregated in the nation.

"As a state, we are losing ground," Poritz wrote. "We have paid lip service to the idea of diversity in our schools, but in the real world we have not succeeded."

The ruling rejected an effort by the mostly white North Haledon school district to lower its property taxes by pulling its students out of the Manchester Regional High School in Passaic County and sending them to an "overwhelmingly white" high school in Midland Park, at a savings of $10,000 per pupil.

In her ruling, Poritz said concerns about racial diversity trump worries about high property taxes.

"Students attending racially imbalanced schools are denied the benefits that come from learning and associating with students from different backgrounds, races and cultures," Poritz wrote. "We find that, in this case, withdrawal by North Haledon will deny the benefits of the educational opportunity offered by a diverse student body to both the students remaining at Manchester Regional and to the students from North Haledon."

Currently, 159 of New Jersey's more than 600 school districts serve students from more than one town. While no schools are petitioning to pull out of these arrangements, the ruling would affect any future requests.

"Going forward, any petition to withdraw from a regional will be reviewed very heavily to its impact on racial balance," said Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey State School Boards Association. "The courts are going to be very strict."

Lawyers in the case said the court simply applied well-established legal principles rejecting school segregation and broke no new ground on racial diversity.

But several legal scholars said the court seemed to be voicing a growing frustration with New Jersey's inability to end school segregation. Poritz noted that New Jersey had outlawed legally segregated schools long before the U.S. Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional 50 years ago in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan.

"It certainly suggests they're not content just to mouth constitutional platitudes and let segregation continue," said Paul Tractenberg, a professor at Rutgers School of Law in Newark.

Frank Askin, founder of the law school's constitutional litigation clinic, said the ruling "shows the court's frustration that despite its historic commitment to school integration, it hasn't occurred." He said the court might be signaling that it would be sympathetic to lawsuits seeking more aggressive remedies, such as regionalization to achieve racial balance.

Lawyers for the districts involved all found something to like in the ruling.

Vito Gagliardi Jr., who argued the case for North Haledon, was pleased the court found it was a desire to cut property taxes, and not "white flight," that prompted its bid to pull out of the regional high school.

He was even happier that the court instructed state Education Commissioner William Librera to come up with a fairer way of dividing the regional high school's costs among the three towns that send students. The decision said North Haledon pays $18,400 per pupil, compared to per-pupil costs of $5,300 for Haledon and $3,400 for Prospect Park. The current formula is based on each town's property values.

"This is a tremendous result," Gagliardi said. "It gives the commissioner of education both the right and the obligation to fix the funding formula that has disproportionately burdened North Haledon for decades."

Stephen Fogarty, a lawyer for the Manchester Regional High School, said, "We're very pleased with the outcome." The high school, located in Haledon, opened in 1960.

The justices agreed with the high school's arguments that North Haledon should be required to continue sending students to the regional high school to slow its transformation from mostly white to mostly Hispanic. Poritz said if North Haledon were allowed to pull out, the white population of Manchester Regional High School would fall from 51 percent to 38 percent by 2005.

"For us, it has been about the quality of the education," Fogarty said.

Allan Dzwilewski, who argued for keeping North Haledon in the regional district on behalf of Haledon and Prospect Park, called the decision "a little bit of an extension" of existing rules that prevent withdrawal from a multidistrict arrangement if racial imbalance will result.

David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, called the ruling "an important signal that it's time" for state leaders to address "the intense segregation in our public schools along race and socio-economic lines."

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