By Charles Mahtesian

Eight years ago, the state of New Jersey took a long look at the Newark city school system and catalogued its findings in an exceptionally disturbing report.

Investigators concluded that the longer a child remained within the Newark public school system, the lower his or her chances of achievement. The schools weren’t simply failing in their teaching mission — they also posed serious health and safety risks to their students. Local officials overlooked these glaring deficiencies largely because jobs and political patronage took precedence over everything else.

Unlike most blue-ribbon reports, this one led to substantive action. Armed with newly minted statutory authority, state education officials marched into town and took control of the deeply troubled school system. That was six years ago.

Today, the Newark school system is only slightly better off. One recent study reported modest gains in test scores and improvement in several other areas. But last year, the school district faced an inexplicable $70 million deficit, in part due to derelict bookkeeping. One audit, for example, found that the state-run district couldn’t account for $25 million.

No one can say with any certainty exactly how this came to be, but in January, the city of Newark filed suit blaming the state for this turn of events. While litigation is a commonplace occurrence nearly everywhere a school takeover has occurred, in this instance there is an unusual twist. Newark is not disputing issues surrounding the state’s right to intervene. Rather, the city charges that the state itself is guilty of financial mismanagement.

The sheer audacity — and shamelessness — of this new gambit is hard to swallow if you are familiar with why the state took control in the first place. Before the state moved in, school spending priorities were so skewed that staff assignments and job security ranked ahead of school maintenance and distribution of supplies to students. The school board and other politicians treated the school system like a bottomless, $600 million job agency. Then, once the state moved in, a motley assortment of city officials, school employees, activists and leaders of the powerful and obstinate local teacher’s union worked tirelessly to undermine the takeover and to regain control.

Certainly, it’s possible that the state of New Jersey botched its rescue attempt. But as long as the question is going to be settled by a court of law, there is one additional issue that’s worth examining: what the plaintiffs have to gain, rather than what they say they’ve lost.

Charles Mahtesian is a former staff writer for Governing.

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