Judge
tells state to make an Abbott plan
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Designation helps P'burg School District; court says program
is disorganized.
From staff and wire reports
NEWARK -- A judge on Monday ordered the
state Department of Education to stop dragging its feet and
come up with a plan to manage court-ordered reforms in some
of New Jersey's neediest school districts.
In a ruling issued Monday in Mercer
County, Superior Court Judge Neil Shuster gave the education
department 45 days to issue a roadmap for the division that
oversees carrying out changes in the state's poorest urban
school districts, known as Abbott districts. The
Phillipsburg School District is one of 31 such school
systems.
In 1997 and 1998, the New Jersey Supreme
Court ordered that students in those districts should
receive a better education through the addition of such
things as high-quality preschool and extra state funding for
school construction projects.
Shuster's ruling requires the state
Department of Education to address the "recruitment,
retention, professional development, and effective
deployment" of its staff and consultants, include annual
goals and objectives, and come up with a realistic budget to
get the work done.
The Education Law Center sued the state
in June over its failure to come up with a management plan
for the next two years.
"A plan and budget is essential for
building public confidence and engaging stakeholders in the
historic effort to improve education in our high-poverty
urban schools," Koren Bell, an attorney with the Education
Law Center, said in a statement. "It will also assist in
holding state education officials accountable for
performance."
Education Law Center Executive Director
David G. Sciarra said the Department of Education is only
being asked to do what it already requires of districts that
receive Abbott funding.
"If the state is expecting the schools
and the districts to be accountable, it itself must be
accountable as well," he said.
Gordon MacInnes, the department's
assistant commissioner for Abbott implementation, said the
state will comply with the judge's order.
"I'd rather win than lose, but there will
be no problem with this decision," he said.
MacInnes said the department was mindful
of the need to issue the plan, but chose to focus on more
immediate priorities "like trying to get third- and
fourth-graders to learn how to read."
Two weeks ago, Phillipsburg School
District officials learned that plans for a new high school
had been cut from a list of projects the New Jersey Schools
Construction Corp. -- a Department of Education agency
created to oversee school construction in Abbott districts'
-- will pay for with the last $1.4 billion of a special
fund.
The SCC is moving forward with only 59 of
an anticipated 350 projects statewide, leaving Phillipsburg
and other Abbott districts in the lurch.
Sciarra said the same problem that
prompted the Education Law Center to sue the Department of
Education in June led to the funding shortfall at the SCC:
lack of accountability.
"The SCC for four years was
unaccountable. It provided no information, no data, no
report, no set of goals and objectives," he said. "It was
impossible to find out what they were doing until it got so
bad the inspector general was brought in to clean up a
mess."
Robert Shapiro, an attorney who
represents the Phillipsburg School District on Abbott
issues, has said the Schools Construction Corp. is required
by law to prepare reports documenting its progress and
submit them to the Legislature each August. Since the
agency's inception in 2002 it has not tendered one such
report, he said.
Express-Times reporter Precious Petty
contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Express-Times. Used with
permission.
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