Asbury Park Press

About 60 Latino parents of Lakewood school students, frustrated that their concerns have long been ignored by the Board of Education, went to Trenton Friday hoping to get an audience with Gov. Murphy. Murphy wasn't available, but they spent about an hour outlining their concerns to staffers.

Issues include low student achievement, school busing, the district's perpetual budget shortfalls and teacher staffing.

It should come as little surprise that the parents don't feel their concerns have been addressed. In a school district that is 86 percent Latino, there are only two Hispanics on the nine-member board — if you count the Latino member who resigned last week, then changed his mind days later. The majority of the board and the board attorney who essentially runs the board are Orthodox Jews, even though all of Lakewood's Orthodox children attend private schools. Legislation is needed to prevent that kind of representative imbalance.

The Latino parents' longstanding belief that their concerns were not being taken seriously finally came to a head when one advertised school board meeting was cut short, before they had a chance to be speak, and a subsequent meeting that was called off before it began. On Aug. 28, the monthly school board meeting was adjourned just 20 minutes after it started and none of the dozens of parents in attendance was allowed to speak. A special meeting last week was canceled after a suspicious package was found near the meeting place. The area was evacuated and police later determined the "package" was an empty suitcase that apparently had been left behind.

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So the Hispanic parents who turned out for the meetings decided to go to Trenton to see if someone there would listen to them. Not surprisingly, they didn't get to meet with any of the four officials who have the wherewithal to address the school district's ongoing problems: Murphy, state Sen. Steve Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and Education Commissioner Lamont Repollet — all of whom, it should be noted, should be thoroughly familiar with the problems by now. Unfortunately, none of them has stepped forward to develop solutions.

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At an editorial board meeting last month, Sweeney said it was Repollet's problem to fix. We disagree. Lakewood's problems require legislative solutions that no one seems to have the courage to initiate. Repollet could, of course, provide suggestions. But he has shown no appetite for engaging in any issues that could be construed as controversial. He has refused our repeated requests over the past 18 months to meet with our editorial board. In a Q&A for our Sunday opinion section in August 2018, he punted on virtually every difficult issue: Lakewood school funding, school segregation, PARCC testing, school consolidation, impact of legal recreational marijuana on school-age children and even later school starting times for high school students.

If Lakewood's problems are to be solved, Murphy and the Legislature should not be counting on Repollet. Any solutions inevitably will involve legislation that must be shepherded through the Senate and Assembly and signed into law by Murphy. Funding, busing and special education issues have bedeviled the district for several years, and they only promise to get worse without legislative relief. The problems won't go away by themselves.

Hopefully, the recent activism by the Latino parents in Lakewood will finally get Murphy and the legislative leadership to get off their hands.