FDU Poll finds voters OK with magnet schools to reduce segregation, divided on district mergers

MADISON BOROUGH, NJ (Morris County) – As talks seeking to settle a lawsuit that could reshape public education in New Jersey move into their second year, most voters say that they’ve heard nothing about the case.

According to the latest results from the FDU Poll, Garden State voters say that they’d accept the building of regional magnet schools to create greater racial integration, but don’t think that New Jersey is segregated in the first place.

“Schools are a major driver of property values, so messing with the school system is touching the third rail,” said Dan Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the Executive Director of the FDU Poll. “Anything that reduces local control is going to face a lot of opposition.”

The lawsuit, Latino Action Network v. New Jersey, was brought in 2018, and slowly made its way through the court system until late last year, when New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin pushed for the case to be resolved in mediation, rather than by a judge. The two sides have now been negotiating over a settlement for more than a year, blowing past deadlines to reach a settlement while saying that there has been good progress in the talks.

Despite the potentially enormous repercussions of the case, the ongoing legal proceedings have fallen under the radar for most New Jersey voters. Only one in six New Jersey voters (16 percent) say that they’ve heard “a lot” (5 percent) or “some” (11 percent) about the case, with the majority (65 percent) saying that they’ve heard “nothing” about it.

“This case has been going on for years, with a lot of it behind closed doors,” said Cassino. “Eventually, though, we’re going to get an announcement that could fundamentally reshape public schools in New Jersey, and it’s going to take a lot of people by surprise.”

According to expert analyses, New Jersey is the seventh most segregated state in the country for Black and Hispanic students, but New Jersey voters simply don’t see it that way. Only 17 percent of New Jersey voters say that Garden State schools are more segregated than those in other states, with 30 percent saying that schools here are less segregated than elsewhere in the country. Black voters (30 percent) and those living in the Urban Core counties (21 percent) are more likely than others to recognize the segregation in New Jersey schools.

While only one in six (17 percent) of New Jersey voters say that the state in general is relatively segregated, far fewer (9 percent) say that the schools in their area are segregated by race. The majority – 79 percent – say that there’s “a good mix” in their local schools.

“One of the real problems with addressing racial segregation in Jersey schools is that people just do not think it’s happening,” said Cassino. “It’s hard to sell people a solution when they don’t think there’s a problem in the first place.”

In the survey, voters were presented with three possible options for increasing racial integration in New Jersey schools. Of these, the creation of regional magnet schools was the most popular, with 60 percent of voters saying that they would find it acceptable. Fifty-two percent of voters say that they would be OK with the mergers of adjacent school systems, and only 35 percent say that transfer systems requiring schools to accept transfers from more diverse school districts would be acceptable. There is already a voluntary transfer system in place that allows students to move to other public schools, but schools have a limited number of seats made available for this purpose, and very few are available at any time.

While support for regional magnet schools is high across the political spectrum, Republicans and conservatives in the state are much less likely to say that school district mergers or transfer systems would be acceptable ways to reduce segregation. Sixty-two percent of Democrats and 61 percent of liberals say that they would be fine with merging school districts, but only 42 percent of Republicans and 39 percent of conservatives in the state agree. This gap in party is partly driven by differences in how Black and Hispanic voters view the proposals: Black (65 percent) and Hispanic voters (64 percent) are much more likely to support school district mergers than white voters (47 percent) are. Similarly, only 31 percent of white voters say that they would support mandatory transfer systems, compared with 53 percent of Black voters.

“Regional magnet schools are the most popular solution because they don’t do anything to disrupt the existing school systems,” said Cassino. “But it’s also not clear how much they would do to solve the deep underlying problem facing the state.”

Potential mergers of school districts also face a hurdle from how New Jersey voters view their own districts, relative to the surrounding school systems. Thirty-eight percent of voters say that their school district is better than the neighboring districts, while only 12 percent say that their school district is worse.

“If you think your schools are worse than the schools next door, a merger might seem like a good thing,” said Cassino. “But people are much more likely to think that their schools are better, so a merger would mean trading down.”