Court Opinion

ID: 9751392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:23:41.686696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:43.336619
License: Public Domain

LaVECCHIA, J.,
concurring, in part and dissenting, in part.
This matter comes before us on a motion in aid of litigants’ rights filed by the Education Law Center. The application was filed shortly after the issuance of an Initial Decision by the Acting Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Office of Administrative Law (OAL), concerning certain global issues affecting implementation of preschool programs for the thirty Abbott school districts. To permit the Commissioner an opportunity to review the Initial Decision and exceptions, and to issue a Final Decision, we allowed the State additional time to respond. The Commissioner’s decision was issued June 1, 2001 and addressed criticisms of the State’s implementation of its preschool program identified in the Initial Decision. The Commissioner also implemented certain reforms suggested by the Initial Decision. Thereafter, movants filed supplemental papers in support of their motion that included matters outside of those raised in the administrative hearing below.
Amici submissions also were received, including supplemental submissions to those that had already been filed with the Court. They also went beyond the record established at the OAL. The State filed a supplemental response.
Although none of the amici have been granted intervenor status, amici school districts, Passaic, Elizabeth and Perth Am-boy, have included in their submissions numerous factual allegations pertaining to each district’s particular ongoing controversy with the State concerning approval of a preschool plan and budget. Those factual allegations were challenged by the State in respect of their reliability and accuracy in portraying the implementation *564of the preschool program in each district. In addition, we have amid applications from the New Jersey Education Association, the New Jersey Association of Children and an omnibus submission by Passaic County Legal Aid representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Head Start, and Early Childhood Program Organizations in two Abbott districts, Paterson and Newark. Again, many of these amid have included submissions containing untested factual information. In addition to its general disagreement concerning the reliability of the extensive supplemental information, the State opposed the submissions of the three school district amid, in particular, on the basis that each was litigating its own controversy before the Commissioner and should not be allowed to insert its individual dispute into this motion in aid of litigants’ rights, and thereby skip the normal process of administrative hearing and appellate review. Moreover, the State maintained that the submissions were, at best, of marginal relevance in assisting the Court in determining whether the instant motion has merit.
For reasons that follow, the undisciplined state of this record renders it incapable, in my view, of supporting the extraordinary relief sought and I join in the majority’s rejection of a Standing Master.
A.
This is an application for litigants’ rights pursuant to Rule 1:10— 3. In my view, it was brought on a record that would not support the grant of a motion for summary judgment. If this Court were sitting as a trial court, the conflicted state of facts, including contradictory information and unreliable evidential submissions, would not satisfy the Brill standard for issuance of summary relief. Brill v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 142 N.J. 520, 666 A.2d 146 (1995). This sweeping application in aid of litigants’ rights is even more inappropriate in that it was brought directly to this Court, which has not retained jurisdiction in the matter, and, indeed, has indicated that the parties are to employ recognized *565avenues of administrative review. Moreover, and contrary to the dissent’s view, this Court is not confronted -with a clear defiance of its specific and unequivocal orders concerning how the State was to implement, in minutia, preschool programs in the Abbott districts. I find no such directives in Abbott v. Burke 153 N.J. 480, 710 A.2d 450 (1998) (Abbott V), or in Abbott v. Burke, 163 N.J. 95, 748 A.2d 82 (2000) (Abbott VI).
Although fashioned as a motion in aid of litigants’ rights, this application seeks above all else to wrest control of preschool implementation from the State and vest it in this Court through our appointment of a Standing Master acting as the Court’s agent to supervise, and if necessary direct, the Department of Education’s implementation of preschool in the Abbott districts. That extraordinary imbalance of the constitutional sharing of powers as between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, is not warranted by the history of this matter. Moreover, it is unwise; this Court should not attempt to be a shadow administrator of education.
In Abbott V, the Court avoided suggesting that the provision of preschool to children in Abbott districts was a requirement rooted in our constitutional mandate for a thorough and efficient education. The Court’s opinion recognized that empirical evidence supported the need for preschool, and that provision of preschool was linked to later success in school. Abbott V, supra, 153 N.J. at 503-04, 710 A.2d 450. The Court discussed the legislative choice to provide preschool, noting that the Legislature recognized its need and provided for early childhood education for three- and four-year-old children in the Abbott school districts. Id. at 505, 710 A.2d 450. The decision recognized that ECPA 2 districts (those districts with equal to or more than forty percent low-income pupils) would be provided with funding for preschool education pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:7f-16. Although that funding was a matter of legislative choice, Justice Handler, writing narrowly for the Court, construed the statute as suggesting that the need for preschool for three- and four-year-old children was as *566compelling in ECPA 1 districts (those districts with equal to or greater than twenty percent but less then forty percent low-income pupils). Abbott V, supra, 153 N.J. at 506, 710 A.2d 450. Therefore, the Court read the statute to require provision of preschool education to three- and four-year-old children in both types of districts. Id. at 506-07, 710 A.2d 450. Significantly, the Court did not require full-day programs. The Court instructed the Commissioner to proceed to implement half-day preschool programs for three- and four-year-old children in E CPA-1 and -2 districts. Id. at 507-08, 710 A.2d 450. That included all thirty Abbott school districts. The Court expressly declined to reach the question whether there was a constitutional requirement for such preschool. Id. at 507, 710 A.2d 450.
Thereafter, it was the executive and legislative choice to implement preschool programs even more expansively than the Court had required. Through enactment of N.J.A.C. 6A:24-3.3, the Commissioner determined to implement full-day preschool for both three- and four-year-old children in Abbott districts. And, the Legislature has funded those programs.
Importantly, Abbott V signaled the Court’s announcement of its desire to end its involvement in this long-lasting dispute concerning school funding. Supra, 153 N.J. at 490, 710 A.2d 450. Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 303 A.2d 273 (1973), arose in the early 1970’s and played a pivotal role in securing legislative passage of an income tax. Richard Lehne, The Quest For Justice: The Politics of School Finance Reform 26-57 (1978). Yet the dispute over adequate funding for the constitutional imperative of a thorough and efficient system of public education lingered and did not end until the Court finally required educational funding parity, ordering the State to pay for the per-pupil funding difference between the poorest districts and the richest. Abbott v. Burke, 149 N.J. 145, 189, 693 A.2d 417 (1997) (Abbott IV). The Court also embraced the State’s choice of curriculum and attendant educational reform in the poorest districts. Abbott V, supra, 153 N.J. at 500-02, 710 A.2d 450. One of the tools the State elected to *567include was preschool and, as noted, that tool was relied upon in Abbott V as the predicate for relief. Id. at 508, 710 A.2d 450.
Today, I join in that aspect of the Court’s disposition that denies the appointment of a Standing Master, a decision that is consistent with the Court’s promise to stay out of ongoing implementation of essentially educational issues while the State pursues radical reform of K-12 education in New Jersey’s thirty Abbott districts, including preschool programs. The State has embarked on its first-ever student recruitment and delivery of preschool education to the entire eligible three- and four-year-old student population in Abbott districts. From 1998 to the 2000-01 school year, the State has dramatically increased preschool enrollment, as the majority notes. During that short period, the State has assisted in or delivered facility solutions to house those programs, and has developed a framework for a curriculum, a budget review process (that at the time of oral argument was evolving to become “district friendly”), a certification. standard, a method for discerning the population of eligible preschool students and for enrollment targets, and implemented the lowest teacher-pupil ratio for this population of students than for any other non-special education pupil population in the State. Much has been done, it is true; no one disputes that there is more to do.
This application for a Standing Master seeks to involve the Court in the details and minutia of a comprehensive and multifaceted education reform effort that the State has in progress. The State has substantially complied with every aspect of the Court’s direction concerning preschool education for Abbott districts, however generally discussed in prior opinions. Movant’s argument for a Standing Master is based on the Court’s exhortation to the State for a “high quality” preschool program, a descriptor used by the State itself in setting its own goal for its ambitious preschool program. But that generalized statement in the Court’s prior opinions does not mean that every difference of opinion between movant and the State as to what is “high quality,” merits review by this Court as a violation of the Court’s expecta*568tions. The reference to “high quality,” in my view, provides substantial discretion to the State and does not give rise to a violation meriting a motion in aid of litigants’ rights whenever movant is disappointed with an implementation choice by the State. It certainly should not support an order for a Standing Master divesting a cabinet officer from executing his constitutional responsibilities to execute the laws within the range of discretion allocated to the office.
I see no basis in this record for the appointment of a Standing Master. Such an extraordinary step should require a compelling demonstration of failure or refusal to perform specific tasks ordered to be done. That is not present here. The reference in our earlier Court opinions to “high quality” preschool provides no such touchstone on which to base a compelling demonstration that a directive of this Court has been violated by the State.
B.
The abysmal softness of the “record” before us makes it a poor vehicle for the Court to wade into more and more specific direction to the State concerning how to implement a preschool program. Indeed, concerning substantive educational standards, enrollment, and recruitment, the majority orders the Commissioner to do that which he already has said that he would do. The Court did not need to grant aid in litigants’ rights on those points.
The balance of the Court’s opinion passes judgment on asserted facts in which I have no confidence, except one. The State readily acknowledged the lateness of its final determinations concerning approval of certain districts’ preschool plans and budgets. That matter, therefore, appropriately may be judged. The State explained its delay, in part, as due to its efforts to come to amicable resolutions when possible, or to allow a district more time to support its plan or budget request. The majority correctly perceived that the result of those delays, even if one were to agree that they were well-intentioned, was effectively to preclude a meaningful opportunity to challenge the Department of Edu*569cation’s individual decisions before the OAL and later through judicial review. The Court’s clarification of its previous order, setting a time frame for decision and shortening the administrative hearing and judicial review process, was necessary to reestablish that opportunity for ensuing school years.
C.
Finally, I add the following comment concerning my understanding of the Court’s discussion of funding assessment. I understand the Court’s characterization to admit that although a funding assessment is to be conducted in accordance with a fair evaluation of actual need as the Department represents, that does not mean that preschool funding must be provided at the level of actual need. Funding may be provided as a percentage of that need, based on that which the State determines it is able to appropriate. I write separately to highlight that understanding of the majority’s judgment.
The Court’s and the dissent’s discussion of community providers, and Head Start specifically, also compels me to comment. The dissent seems to be of the view that Head Start must be subsidized so it can provide preschool even if the combination of Head Start funding and State funding would be more than the State would expend to provide preschool services of equal quality. The majority seems to support at least part of that view when it suggests that the State “must” subsidize Head Start teachers’ salaries. Both opinions miss the point that the public is entitled to the provision of quality services on the most economical of terms. If a provider such as Head Start cannot maintain the required level of preschool program at or below the State’s expenditure level for the provision of quality preschool, then it should not demand a contract at greater cost to the State. The answer for Head Start lies not in excessive public funding, but in achieving efficiencies. Accordingly, I write to emphasize my view that the requirement of a “needs assessment” for community providers does not mean that the State must insist that a district reach *570financial agreement with community providers “at any cost.” Those providers have a responsibility to come forward with thoughtful, economically responsible proposals that serve the public interest.
For the reasons expressed, I respectfully concur in part and dissent in part from the judgment of the Court.