Lawsuit targets New Jersey home rule over school segregation

We know from our newsroom, and we'll talk to tonight's guest, Marianne Carruth. These stories sometimes take a really long time to come to fruition. And specifically, Marianne, thank you so much for being with us tonight. We really appreciate it. Before I jump into your background, because I want to get to know you a little bit, we just want to say one of the stories that we're going to dig into tonight is a report that you have spent quite a long time digging into, and it's about the segregation of New Jersey schools. This is an issue that means so much to me as a New Jersey taxpayer, as a parent who's deeply invested in schools, and this to me is like a... Truly goes to the heart of local journalism. So tell us a little bit about you first. I know you've spent a number of years digging into the education system in New Jersey, even in Paterson. Tell us a little bit about your background. I trained as a reporter in India and came here as a graduate student. I worked as a designer for some time. And then I started reporting in the United States in 2017. And I've been reporting since then. I've covered immigration. I was a freelancer covering immigration for the longest time. And for the past five or six years, I've been working at the Record covering education. Wait, did you say you were a designer? You were a designer? Yes, I did work as an interactive designer, and I worked for Rutgers University, but I also worked for an online magazine. So I've done work that is sort of the, you know, interactive journalism. I've done that kind of work, too. But yeah, that's maybe why. So I've seen some videos that you've done online to a lot of vertical videos, which we know some of our digital imprints at this point have well moved into vertical video. And they're really not only, of course, doing the good work of print journalism, but they're also accompanying that with video now. So I've seen some of your videos and I thought to myself. This woman knows what she's doing. Maybe it's because you have a background in it. Yes, I actually did work in TV, too, a little bit, a very long time ago. But I really enjoy print journalism, and I love the vertical videos that we get to produce spontaneously. So, as I said, I'm a New Jerseyan. I grew up in New Jersey. I must admit to you, I grew up in the family where we were devotees of the Star-Ledger. But that's because I was in Passaic County. But my husband grew up in Bergen County. So he is a. A devotee of the Bergen Record, which I understand NorthJersey.com is now sort of all-encompassing when it comes to the Bergen Record. Correct. Yes, we are the Bergen Record. Now we are called the Record, and that is NorthJersey.com. And I cover exactly those towns, Bergen County, the towns in Bergen County, Passaic County. Those are our core coverage areas. Also Sussex, a little bit of Essex, Morris. Do you find that the issue of education is different wherever you go? Because when I think about the counties of New Jersey, obviously, I mean, Bergen County is such a massive area, right? You have more urban environments and then you have much more suburban and rural parts of Bergen County. But if you look at Sussex, that's a very different environment than you have in Passaic County or what have you. Do you find that the education systems are unique to each county or do you see some similarities across the board? I think that the education systems are similar based really on suburban and urban towns. So I think I see similarities in just student populations, but also the scale and the kind of situations that arise in urban towns like Paterson and Passaic City, whereas towns like Westwood, well, the Westwood Regional School District. Ridgewood, these are different towns. They have different school systems. They have a different population. Sussex County is much more rural, but I've also had the fun part of my job is I get to go and interview teachers and see how they are doing their job and making an impact. And that's taken me to really all the counties, all the northern New Jersey counties. But to answer your question, I would say that the differences I see are primarily between urban and suburban school systems. I would imagine the way that these schools are funded comes into play a lot of times, right? You know, oftentimes in New Jersey, we tout our amazing school districts. We talk about... Our state-ranked schools, we talk about the quality of our public education, which I think folds back into the story that we're going to talk about tonight, your reporting, which is oftentimes in the state of New Jersey, people move to and move out of certain areas based on the quality of the schools. Yes, completely. And that is truly at the core of the reporting that I've done that we're going to talk about tonight. School ratings drive home values, and that's what makes a lot of towns attractive to families that are looking to move into them. And the school segregation issue, which is at the heart of the lawsuits that I've been reporting on, has ramifications for that entire system, because what the lawsuit really is hoping to achieve, that is what the plaintiffs are hoping to achieve, is to not have such A system where you are assigned only to the school district that your family lives in and pays property taxes towards, but to sort of make these boundaries a little more permeable. All right. So let's get into the lawsuit, because I'm going to leave it to you to explain it. Lawsuits can get really complicated for a lot of people. There's a lot of words on those pages. Thank But it is at the crux of your reporting. So the state is, as we said, the state's known for having some of the best schools. you so And this is why people move to these areas. But it looks like and correct me if I'm wrong. much The plaintiffs are arguing that our schools are unconstitutionally segregated, meaning for you keep out those that can't afford the higher joining or the better education just by way of the property values being what they are, the home values being what they are, etc. us. Well, yes. Yes and no. For certainly what the plaintiffs here are saying is that our schools are unconstitutionally segregated. But what they are saying, the reason why this happens is because of how New Jersey enforces its home rule laws. And like you said, you're a parent. I'm a parent. We know home rule. And it has been a tradition in New Jersey forever. What the plaintiffs say in this lawsuit is that Home rule is so strictly enforced and applied in New Jersey that you can have children growing up in towns like East Orange and Newark, where because of historical issues, they do not have access to great school systems. But right next door to them are towns like Glen Ridge and, say, South Orange and Maplewood that have really good school systems, but home rule prevents them from From crossing district borders and attending. Schools and better schools and really getting the education they deserve. Are the plaintiffs alleging that the state is doing this intentionally or if this is just a byproduct of the way that the state system is set up? I guess what I'm what I'm ultimately asking is, do they feel as if the state is purposely leaving these children stuck or is it just the way the system is formulated? Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody is my reading of the lawsuits and the complaints. is that nobody is saying that this is a malicious outcome at all. It is the result of the situation that we have in New Jersey, and it is a result of New Jersey's laws and its residency statutes. So what they're saying is that the state is responsible for the situation, and the state has let it continue unaddressed for many, many years, and that this really needs to change now. I guess to better understand this, I would love to ask you then, how did we get here? If this is a longstanding issue, how did this problem come up originally? What was the genesis of it? The genesis of the problem, according to experts, is the years of redlining historically discriminatory housing policies. That sort of limited people to stay within towns like Newark and Paterson and Camden and Trenton that prevented them from buying homes and these are African-American black communities that were prevented from buying homes in better neighborhoods and the result is that they have continued to stay there and they are limited by the strict Home rule laws. And the lawsuit, to be very clear, is not saying that the home rule laws need to be thrown out. Not at all. The lawsuits, the plaintiffs have been saying they want them to relax a little bit so that kids can travel between districts a little easier. So there's more inter-district choice available to parents. Would that be like a magnet system? Yes, definitely. A magnet system is one of the solutions that the plaintiffs have sort of put into the lawsuit, 100%. Yeah, so thinking about this, as I'm listening to you tell me about this, and I'm also thinking about it from my perspective, like I said, as somebody who has kids in the school system, I'm thinking about all of the problems that we hear about, even in some of the best school districts around the state, right? We have done an extensive amount of reporting in places like Montclair that has their own budget issues, and they claim that they are struggling in some respects to educate the students that they have in their very township. Based on the needs of those students, be it special needs or just extenuating circumstances that they don't feel like they're a lot of parents don't feel like they're meeting the bar when it comes to educating those students. So I'm kind of wondering how it would work to bring students in from the outside who rightfully need a good education. Right. But at the same time, if you have towns where people don't feel like their kids are already getting the education that supports their property taxes, how that would kind of all work out. So that's not a question for me. That is a question. Yes, yes. I guess I'm just thinking about a real world, like a real world application of this. Yes. You know, that is that is really the most I mean, the devil is in the details. So that is the most complicated part of this, the outcome of this lawsuit. We don't know yet how the appellate court is going to rule. But if there is a ruling in the end in favor of the plaintiffs, The attorneys who are fighting this in court told me they expect to spend long hours and days in courtrooms discussing how the state would then remedy the system, how they might introduce magnet schools, how they might consolidate school districts, which is already something that the Sheldon administration is thinking about, independent of the lawsuit. Yeah, that remains to be seen. Yeah, I know that. And I would be interested to see how that all plays out, again, especially considering, as you said. They're going to have to spend real time in these classrooms, those that are performing and those that are not, right? Those that are doing very, very well and thriving to figure out are there common denominators or how can we improve the system? Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, I was talking to one of the plaintiffs, well, the organization is the Urban League of Essex County, and their president, Vivian Cox Fraser said that, look, what they really want to do is reflect the diversity of New Jersey streets in their schools. You know, you should not, you should have. The schools should mirror their communities and New Jersey is a very diverse community and our schools should mirror it. They're not saying that segregation exists in every single school district at all and this is again me reading the lawsuit. I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody but yeah they're saying that there is enough case for the state to step in and relax municipal and district borders so there's a little more mixing. And exposure and access to the highly resourced, high-functioning school systems that are sometimes right next door to these really low-income, racially sort of isolated school systems. Marion, have you been able to talk to anybody at the state level? Are they giving you any assurances that maybe the funding formula might change or that they would be open to reconfiguring the... The school system or the busing system or any of the things that go into changing up the way our schools are run? Yes. I mean, this is separate entirely from the lawsuit. I have been trying to have politicians talk to me about their concerns over the lawsuit. And they all tell me that they're just waiting to see what happens. But simultaneously, the Sherrill administration has been talking about consolidating schools. and looking at shared services and this is because of a whole different issue which is the budget crisis that school districts have been facing. I mean you just talked about Montclair and that is one school district that was really suffering from a budget crisis and this is hitting school districts all across the state and state governors know that it is time that they stepped in and tried to use things like economies of scale to make it easier. And cheaper for schools to, say, share busing systems or consolidate districts so that you're benefiting, like I said, from economies of scale. It really feels like it's two New Jerseys, like it's two separate states that we function in. And depending on where you fall, you know, on either side of the line, you get that version of the state. Well, you literally repeated something that I heard in the court. I'm almost 100% sure I heard that in one of the arguments at the appellate court. Somebody said there are two New Jerseys, and that is, well, plaintiffs say that this is what they really want to address. They want to change it so that. Children are not growing up strangers to each other, even though they are literally just a few miles away from each other in terms of the schools they attend. Marianne, I want to have my team put up your article if we have it so that people know where to find it. Do we have that article handy? OK, all right. That's all right. But we know that we can direct people to NorthJersey.com. They'll be able to find your article there. How long have you been working on this? And are we going to take a break after this or are we going to dump into, you know? Jump into yet another investigation, another lawsuit after this. Well, right now, well, I've been working on this since 2018. Well, not technically 2018. The lawsuit was brought in 2018, but the rulings. came out in 2023. This lawsuit has been moving so slowly that the plaintiffs complained that the Murphy administration was trying to delay making a decision so that they could punt it to the next administration because it is such a politically sensitive topic, you know? So what I'm waiting for is what everybody else is waiting for, which is a ruling from the appellate court. People really expect that one way or the other, this lawsuit is going to end up in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey? Yes, the Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey. All right. So you'll be following this all the way through. I mean, you're I mean, listen, you're eight years in at this point. Don't stop now. You can't quit now on us. No way. All right. Mary Ann Carew, thank you so much for being with us tonight and for joining us in your perspective. Will you come back for your next investigation? I would love to. Sure. All right. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time tonight. And we'll check out your story. And if anybody has any questions, they can also email you. I saw that your email is also associated with your byline as well. Correct. They can email me. It's written there. So thank you. And thanks for having me.