Negotiations over a possible settlement are expected to begin this week between the Murphy administration and a group that filed a lawsuit in May seeking to end what it called de facto segregation in New Jersey’s public and charter schools.

The outcome of the case could force sweeping changes to diversify schools, much as ideologically similar cases in the past have directed more state funding to poor school districts and required towns to provide thousands of units of affordable housing.

Facing a Friday deadline to respond to the original complaint, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal asked a Mercer County judge for a two-week extension “to facilitate discussions between the parties.”

“We are encouraged to believe that an amicable resolution is possible,” Grewal wrote in an Aug. 30 letter.

Anthony Campisi, a spokesman for the New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools, which filed the lawsuit, said the organization agreed to the extension “in the hope that we can begin serious negotiations toward a settlement."

“Our goal here is to avoid the prolonged litigation and get to a plan that really addresses the problems that we’ve laid out in this complaint,” he said, adding that the first meeting between the sides has been tentatively scheduled for this week.

The lawsuit has put Gov. Phil Murphy, a progressive Democrat who served on the national board of the NAACP and has built his political brand around creating a more inclusive state, in the potentially awkward spot of fighting school integration efforts in court.

The governor's office did not respond to a request for comment last week. But on the day the lawsuit was filed in May, spokesman Dan Bryan said that "as the head of one of the most diverse states in the nation," the governor "believes strongly that we must combat the deeply rooted problem of segregation."

"Although we can’t comment on pending litigation, the governor is deeply committed to boosting diversity in our schools," Bryan said at the time.

A settlement could include a remediation plan that lays out what the state must do — likely over a period of years — to address policies that the lawsuit says has created one of the country's most segregated school systems in terms of both race and income.

Remedies suggested in the lawsuit include the creation of magnet schools that draw from multiple towns and districts, or transfer plans allowing black and Latino students to attend schools outside their home districts while giving financial incentives for the districts that take them.

Under a third proposed solution, called “regional controlled choice,” students would rank their preferred schools, and schools would weigh diversity in admissions.

Any change to the status quo, however, is bound to be met with resistance by many residents in a state where the mere suggestion of sharing services across municipal borders — let alone altering the composition of schools — can spark opposition.

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The New Jersey Coalition for Diverse and Inclusive Schools was formed in 2016 by more than 20 academics, attorneys and leaders from a range of civil rights, religious and advocacy groups. They argue in their lawsuit, which includes several families with school-age children, that school segregation harms all students and violates the state constitution.

Integration, on the other hand, has educational and social benefits, they say. They cite research showing that black and Latino students who attend racially and socioeconomically diverse schools are more likely to achieve higher test scores and grades and graduate from high school and college.

As it is, nearly half of the New Jersey's 585,000 black and Latino students go to schools that are more than 90 percent non-white, according to the lawsuit. Many of those schools are also marked by high levels of poverty.

Overall, New Jersey is the sixth-most-segregated state in the nation for black students, and seventh for Latino students, according to a study by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com

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