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January 20, 2026The State Takes Over Lakewood. Finally.
New Jersey Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer just announced (see press release below) that the Department of Education will take over Lakewood Public Schools. The ruling comes in an “Order to Show Cause,” which says a comprehensive audit “revealed pervasive, endemic educational and operational failures” throughout the district. The Order then itemizes reasons why the state will now appoint a new superintendent; implement an improvement plan for the district; appoint a Highly Skilled Professional (HSP) to “provide direct oversight of the District’s special education office and special education services provided by the District;” appoint an HSP to oversee transportation; and appoint another to oversee the multitude of private Jewish day schools which receive varying amounts of public funding.
In addition, the current elected school board will become “advisory” and the Commissioner will appoint three additional board members for two-year terms.
This takeover is a long time coming. Back in 2014 the state appointed a Fiscal Monitor to oversee the district because of chronic fiscal mismanagement. In 2017, advocates, including me, started calling for a state takeover for reasons described by Superintendent Laura Winters, still in her position, who wrote in a letter to the community,
It is with great sadness that I must inform you that the Lakewood School District is unable to provide its students with a “thorough and efficient” education required by the New Jersey State Constitution. The level of education that will be offered to the students of the Lakewood School District in the 2017-2018 school year, is in my professional opinion, tragically inadequate and inferior compared to the education offered to those students in wealthier towns in Ocean County and across the state.
The state DOE agrees: the Order says the cause of that “tragic” inadequacy is “a consistent pattern of neglect and misfeasance by various elected and appointed Lakewood school leaders with respect to critical governance, finance, curriculum, transportation and special education recommendations made by [the NJDOE] over the years.'”
This past October the most recent State Monitor overruled the School Board’s attempt to rehire its longtime attorney Michael Inzelbuch, whom it paid close to $1 million a year. The district is currently operating under a budget of $303.8 million, which presumes a $100 million state loan. This, according to the most recent budget available, covers 4,100 in-district students, a significant drop in enrollment from just a few years ago, plus special education and transportation costs for more than 50,000 Jewish students who attend religious schools. Tuition to private special education schools, including one that costs $170,000 a year, is $84 million, up by $10 million from the previous year. Another $27 million goes to services to non-public schools and $48 million is allocated for transportation.
According to the most recent state standardized tests, 60% of in-district Lakewood students can’t read at grade level and 75% lack proficiency in math. The graduation rate is 82%, well below the state average. Below is the press release from Gov. Phil Murphy’s office:
Following a recent court ruling and years of documented failures, the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) announced today that it has filed an Order to Show Cause regarding the Lakewood Township School District (District) as the initial step toward full State intervention in the District. This filing represents a significant and necessary action to address persistent deficiencies that have denied Lakewood students the thorough and efficient education guaranteed by the New Jersey Constitution.
On September 8, 2025, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court, in Alcantara v. Allen-McMillan (Alcantara II), determined that Lakewood public school students “suffer from an ongoing constitutional deprivation,” and identified the causes of that deprivation as a “consistent pattern of neglect and misfeasance by various elected and appointed Lakewood school leaders with respect to critical governance, finance, curriculum, transportation and special education recommendations made by [the NJDOE] over the years.”
The Order to Show Cause calls on the District to demonstrate why the State should not initiate a full State intervention of the Lakewood Public School District, pursuant to State law (N.J.S.A. 18A:4-24 and N.J.S.A. 18A:7A-15).
“For more than a decade, the New Jersey Department of Education has been working with the Lakewood Township School District to address ongoing fiscal and operational concerns that impact students, staff, parents, and the entire Lakewood community,” said New Jersey Department of Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer. “For all of those impacted, most especially the students of Lakewood, we are obligated to intervene in this situation and provide the district with the necessary oversight to course correct.”
Today’s filing outlines the extensive and significant steps the NJDOE has taken to support the District. These efforts have included financial assistance, logistical and administrative support, and educational resources. The NJDOE has also installed State monitors and provided tens of millions of dollars in State aid advances to help the District meet its immediate obligations; however, significant deficiencies persist, necessitating today’s filing.
For a copy of the Order to Show Cause, please click here.
For a copy of the Administrative Order for Full State Intervention, please click here.
For a copy of the State Intervention Plan for the Lakewood Township School District, please click here.
6 Comments
More than 11 and a half years ago my co-counsel Arthur Lang filed a petition with the Commissioner of Education arguing that Lakewood public school students were being denied their fundamental constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient” education because of inadequate funding available for their education. I joined the case almost immediately as a participant (the term for a friend of the court in administrative proceedings). In recent years, I have served as co-counsel.
Eleven years ago the State began appointing multiple state monitors to serve in Lakewood. They have been there continuously ever since, with broad statutory powers and duties to override virtually all local school board and superintendent decisions. The monitors are also statutorily required to submit weekly reports to the commissioner or her designee. Yet for virtually that entire period the monitors were never treated as a vehicle for the State to honor its longstanding state constitutional obligation to assure T&E to Lakewood public school students.
It took Arthur Lang and me about seven years, largely because of State delaying tactics, to finally get an administrative law judge to issue an initial decision in 2021 that those students were indeed being denied T&E. But that decision was advisory to the commissioner, who rejected it. It took us another two years to persuade a unanimous three-judge panel of the Appellate Division to reverse the commissioner’s decision and establish as a matter of law in 2023 that Lakewood students were being denied T&E. Still the State refused to act in a meaningful way to remedy this violation. Instead it blamed the local district and local residents, but never acted on its clear constitutional power and duty to take action—until now, that is with the case awaiting action in the NJ Supreme Court on a judicially-imposed remedy.
How sad and inexplicable that for more than 11 years countless Lakewood public school students have been denied the educational rights to which they were entitled because the State would not honor its constitutional obligations to them. Perhaps today marks a new day—at least for the Lakewood students still in school—but my colleague and I will be watching carefully to assure that the State actually uses its takeover to finally honor its obligation to those students.
More than 11 and a half years ago my co-counsel Arthur Lang filed a petition with the Commissioner of Education arguing that Lakewood public school students were being denied their fundamental constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient” education because of inadequate funding available for their education. I joined the case almost immediately as a participant (the term for a friend of the court in administrative proceedings). In recent years, I have served as co-counsel.
Eleven years ago the State began appointing multiple state monitors to serve in Lakewood. They have been there continuously ever since, with broad statutory powers and duties to override virtually all local school board and superintendent decisions. The monitors are also statutorily required to submit weekly reports to the commissioner or her designee. Yet for virtually that entire period the monitors were never treated as a vehicle for the State to honor its longstanding state constitutional obligation to assure T&E to Lakewood public school students.
It took Arthur Lang and me about seven years, largely because of State delaying tactics, to finally get an administrative law judge to issue an initial decision in 2021 that those students were indeed being denied T&E. But that decision was advisory to the commissioner, who rejected it. It took us another two years to persuade a unanimous three-judge panel of the Appellate Division to reverse the commissioner’s decision and establish as a matter of law in 2023 that Lakewood students were being denied T&E. Still the State refused to act in a meaningful way to remedy this violation. Instead it blamed the local district and local residents, but never acted on its clear constitutional power and duty to take action—until now, that is with the case awaiting action in the NJ Supreme Court on a judicially-imposed remedy.
How sad and inexplicable that for more than 11 years countless Lakewood public school students have been denied the educational rights to which they were entitled because the State would not honor its constitutional obligations to them. Perhaps today marks a new day—at least for the Lakewood students still in school—but my colleague and I will be watching carefully to assure that the State actually uses its takeover to finally honor its obligation to those students.
And also, over 8 years for the segregation lawsuit against the State of New Jersey by the Latino Action Network , the NAACP and the United Methodist Church arguing the State failed its constitutional obligation to provide T&E to all students regardless of the zip code in which they reside, to go to trial. Politicians banked on lengthy mediation to create an out of sight out of the mind scenario allowing the can to be kicked down the road for the next unwilling administration.
A campaign promise of Mikie Sherrill was to address education and make it fair for all.
It is “funny” what has happened in Lakewood — a district in which the State has already had more than a decade of control, through required state monitors (for whom the Lakewood district has been obligated to pay out of its own school budget, even as borrowing from the State itself), and even though such monitors have had “broad statutory powers and duties to override virtually all local school board and superintendent decisions” – the NJ DoE now has to “take over” because it has deemed that Lakewood has not fulfilled its obligation to a T&E education.
The question is — would not logic decree that the State monitors did not do their due diligence in providing what they considered to be the necessary guidance, changes, and directions to keep it from failing? So now the state will come in “full force” and change everything. Does this sound logical to anyone with common sense?
You are exactly right. Since at least 2009 the State was on notice that Lakewood public school students were struggling educationally at least in part because mandated costs for transportation and special education services for the ever-growing nonpublic school population were consuming a larger and larger portion of the public-school budget. By 2021, an administrative law judge found it amounted to 52% of the budget. So, Lakewood’s public-school students, who are virtually 100% low-income and more than 95% Latino and black, were supposed to make do on 48% of the budget.
The State knew that very well but chose to do nothing other than to blame the local district for mismanagement and not raising enough money locally, and to force hundreds of millions of dollars in theoretically repayable loans against future state education aid on the district instead of adjusting the School Funding Reform Act as it was constitutionally required to do. It has been fundamental NJ constitutional doctrine since 1973 that the State, not local districts, is ultimately responsible for assuring students T&E and has to do whatever is necessary to bring that result about.
State takeover of a district is the ultimate expression of that power and duty but forgive me for being a bit skeptical about how the State will exercise that nuclear option when it could have taken more modest steps for the past 11+ years, since our Alcantara lawsuit was filed on behalf of the public-school students, but chose not to.
You are exactly right. Since at least 2009 the State was on notice that Lakewood public school students were struggling educationally at least in part because mandated costs for transportation and special education services for the ever-growing nonpublic school population were consuming a larger and larger portion of the public-school budget. By 2021, an administrative law judge found it amounted to 52% of the budget. So, Lakewood’s public-school students, who are virtually 100% low-income and more than 95% Latino and black, were supposed to make do on 48% of the budget.
The State knew that very well but chose to do nothing other than to blame the local district for mismanagement and not raising enough money locally, and to force hundreds of millions of dollars in theoretically repayable loans against future state education aid on the district instead of adjusting the School Funding Reform Act as it was constitutionally required to do. It has been fundamental NJ constitutional doctrine since 1973 that the State, not local districts, is ultimately responsible for assuring students T&E and has to do whatever is necessary to bring that result about.
State takeover of a district is the ultimate expression of that power and duty but forgive me for being a bit skeptical about how the State will exercise that nuclear option when it could have taken more modest steps for the past 11+ years, since our Alcantara lawsuit was filed on behalf of the public-school students, but chose not to.