Campbell Brown’s PEJ Files Another Lawsuit– Now in New Jersey
On November 01, 2016, Campbell Brown’s Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ) filed its third lawsuit in pursuit of teacher tenure laws, this time in New Jersey.
PEJ’s first suit continues to sit in the New York courts, and its second lawsuit was just dismissed in Minnesota.
In short, PEJ’s third lawsuit tries to paint New Jersey’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher tenure policy as unconstitutional based on the New Jersey constitution’s education terminology of the legislature’s charge to provide “for the maintenance and support of a through and efficient system of free public schools for all children of the state.”
However, it seems that the lawsuit does not make its case; even though the suit takes issue with the LIFO policy for not considering the results of teacher evaluation when reductions in force are in order, the legislature’s LIFO policy could still be regarded in court as “thorough and efficient.”
The PEJ suit argues that Newark tries to dodge the legislature’s LIFO reduction-in-force requirement by not laying off teachers rated ineffective and instead putting such teachers into a pool of employees that take other jobs (including clerical and paraprofessional positions). The suit continues by noting that such a practice is expensive and still requires Newark schools to rehire such “ineffective” teachers when positions open up as opposed to being able to hire new, out-of-district, “effective” teachers instead.
Though the lawsuit touches on the declining enrollment in Newark’s traditional public schools, it does not discuss a major cause: Newark is a state-run district, and as Campbell Brown’s PEJ Files Another Lawsuit– Now in New Jersey | deutsch29:
