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OAL
DKT. NOS. EDU 03246-01S, EDU 04029-99S, EDU 04030-99S, EDU 04113-99S,
EDU 04436-99S, EDU 05356-99N, EDU 05358-99N, EDU 05799-99N, EDU
05804-99N, EDU 05873-99N, EDU 07157-99N, EDU 07158-99N, EDU 07456-99N,
EDU 07914-00N, EDU 09462-00N
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Michelle
L. Miller and Michael C. Walters, Deputy Attorneys
General, for
respondent (John J. Farmer,
Jr., Attorney General of New Jersey,
attorney)
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Record
Closed:March 15, 2001
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Decided:April
20, 2001
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BEFORE
JEFF S. MASIN, ACTING CHIEF ALJ:
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Petitioners,
who are students and parents in the Abbott school districts of
Paterson, Jersey City, Newark
(each a State-operated district) and West New York ("the
four districts"), represented by the Education Law Center ("ELC"),
counsel to the class of Abbott
students and parents, and who are also Boards of Education from
several Abbott districts, seek
a determination that the respondent State Department of
Education ("DOE" or "Department" or "agency") has failed to meet
its obligation to provide high-quality,
well-planned preschool education for three- and four-year-old
children in those districts.
The sources for this obligation are the Supreme Court
decisions issued in Abbott v. Burke , 153 N.J. 480
(1998) ("Abbott V "), and Abbott v.
Burke , 163 N.J . 95 (2000) ("Abbott VI ").
ELC counsel has identified several issues that
have, for purposes of this case, been labeled as "global issues."These
issues address matters that
the ELC contends involve general systemic deficiencies in the
manner and process by which
the DOE has responded to its obligations.
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ELC
counsel first identified a series of such "global" issues when
this matter first came before
the Office of Administrative Law ("OAL") in the fall of 1999.
At that time counsel filed briefs
addressing these matters with then Chief Administrative Law Judge
Barbara Harned, who consolidated
the then pending Abbott appeals for the purpose of resolving
the global issues.2
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However,
the parties and Judge Harned, aware that the Supreme
Court was soon to issue a decision in a pending proceeding known
now as Abbott VI ,
agreed to withhold determination of the issues pending the Court's
decision, which was issued on
March 7, 2000. In that decision, the Court urged the districts
and
2
The individualized aspects of the several cases remained with
the assigned administrative law judges and, as explained, some
of these have since been withdrawn, settled, or, at the request
of counsel, left in repose pending the determination of the global
issues.
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