Lang Lawsuit: If BOE, State Prevail Formula Will Not be Fixed

 The Lakewood BOE and the state of NJ attorney general Gurbir Grewal both responded to the ruling in the Lang Lawsuit and said that in fact Lakewood did provide a Thorough and Efficient education to its public school students and asked that the judge reopen the case so they can show the facts and that the Commissioner should rule that Lakewood has provided T&E to its public school students. 

 The initial ruling was that the Lakewood school district did not provide a T&E education but that the Funding formula was not to blame rather Lakewood taxpayers caused the educational deficiencies. Lang said the only way to win this case is to show that because of the lack of funding there is no T&E and the judge's favorable decision on T & E  is the legal basis for fixing the formula. Lakewood taxpayers will soon owe the state $200 million in loans including a request for $70 million loan for this year's budget.

 "We were in an excellent position winning the most important issue".   

 Lang tweeted "If BOE prevails the formula will not be fixed, the state will figure out a way to make us pay the loans and education will not improve. I was confident we'd be out of the Office of Administrative Law and into the Appellate DIvision by summer. We were in an excellent position winning the most important issue. The BOE just asked for a remand to overturn our win, agreeing with the state.

Case might be done or stuck in OAL for another two years".

R" Aaron Lang said there are 2 steps to fix the formula. 1) Administrative Law Judge finds no T&E in Lakewood.  2) to show that the formula is at fault, mainly for regular court. Won on 1) and needed the commissioner of education to review before regular court. BOE wants the commissioner to send the case back to OAL to reverse our win on step 1. Spent 7 years there. It's time for a regular court.

In conclusion to his response Lang said: The failure of the school district is not because of the defunct “courtesy” busing, “fiscal mismanagement” from a decade ago or the failure to raise taxes a decade ago. The numbers, tens of millions, soon a hundred million, simply does not add up. The heart of the matter is the that the SFRA does not acknowledge the existence of 30,000 children and growing. By not counting six-sevenths of the student population, Lakewood is falsely deemed property wealthy and the most needy children in the state are neglected of a public education.