Lang Lawsuit Response to State Opposition

R' Aron (Arthur) Lang, who has tirelessly devoted countless hours over a decade advocating for a fairer school funding for Lakewood, has recently filed a reply brief to the State Education Commissioner’s opposition to Lang's hard efforts.  See full response here

Faanews reports: Mr. Lang is also renewing his efforts to get the court decision to be expedited. Mr. Lang's long time 2 arguments are; 1) Lakewood's students are not receiving a constitutionally sound education (known as a Thorough and Efficient education, or T&E), and; 2) the fault of this lies squarely in the fact that New Jersey's School Funding Formula (SFRA) is unconstitutional as applied to Lakewood's unique demographic situation (which has many nonpublic students who need transportation but whom are not counted towards funding).

Succeeding on both of these arguments is key to be able to force State officials to finally provide fairer funding to Lakewood.

 Here is an excerpt:

11.LSD public-school students are unique in another important

and relevant way—only they and the Abbott/SDA students have been

found, as a matter of law, to have been denied their fundamental

constitutional right to T&E. For that reason, they stand apart from the

rest of New Jersey’s public-school students and are entitled to special

judicial and legislative solicitude.

Footnote except to answer why we dont raise taxes:

To the extent that the State asserts one of LSD’s failures relative to T&E is its failure to raise more local tax revenue to

help to support its public schools, there are three answers: (i) state statutes both cap a district’s capacity to increase

local taxes and explicitly preclude some increases in local taxation from being used for T&E purposes; (ii) the only time

that the State, through its State monitors in 2014, required LSD to increase local tax revenue, the district complied—

otherwise the most the State did was to “suggest” that LSD consider increasing its local taxes; and (iii) the capacity of

Lakewood to increase its local taxes, even to the level of its LFS, is unclear since it is regularly listed as one of New

Jersey’s poorest municipalities, with the highest percentage of residents living in poverty, more than 39%.

Oral arguments on the appeal have not yet been scheduled.

Faanews reports: While R' Aron continues to work tirelessly for fairer funding for all of Lakewood, Township and School District officials - including the incumbent Board of Education members who previously claimed to openly support R' Aron - remain silent regarding the Commissioner's continued efforts to subterfuge fairer funding for Lakewood.