The recent decision of the Appellate Division in Alcantara v. Allen-McMillan (Docket No. A-2493-23), approved for publication on September 8, 2025, underscores a difficult truth about public education in New Jersey. While the court affirmed that the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 (SFRA) is constitutional as applied to the Lakewood School District, it also recognized that the children enrolled in that district continue to experience what it called an “ongoing constitutional deprivation.” This acknowledgment reflects a tension that lies at the heart of New Jersey education law: the state’s obligation under the Constitution to provide all children with a “thorough and efficient system of free public schools” must operate within the constraints of legislative policy, administrative discretion, and local governance.
The constitutional guarantee is found in Article VIII, Section 4, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution. For decades, this provision has been tested through litigation designed to measure whether funding formulas, legislative enactments, or administrative policies actually secure the rights of children. The most significant line of authority is the Abbott litigation, beginning with Abbott v. Burke in the 1980s and culminating in Abbott XXI in 2011. Those cases established that students in underfunded, high-poverty districts were entitled to remedies ranging from increased per-pupil spending to universal preschool. In Abbott XX (199 N.J. 140, 2009), the New Jersey Supreme Court conditionally approved the SFRA, provided that the Legislature fully funded the formula and that the Commissioner of Education monitored whether it continued to operate at an optimal level.
Lakewood presented an entirely different factual landscape. Although the township has roughly 37,000 school-aged children, only about 6,000 attend public schools. The overwhelming majority—approximately 84 percent—are enrolled in private religious schools, most within the Orthodox Jewish community. The public school population itself is more than 86 percent Latino, overwhelmingly low-income, and includes a high proportion of English Language Learners. The district’s annual budget of approximately $143 million has been consumed disproportionately by transportation and special education costs for the non-public school population. In one recent year, more than $78 million—over half of the total budget—went to those expenditures, leaving classroom instruction salaries among the lowest in the state and depriving students of early childhood programs that had been recommended as far back as 2009. Standardized test results confirm the depth of the crisis. In some years, only five percent of high school students met proficiency standards in mathematics, and SAT performance placed the district in the thirteenth percentile statewide.
Against this backdrop, parents filed a petition asserting that SFRA was unconstitutional as applied to Lakewood. Their argument was not that the Legislature had failed to fully fund the statute, as was alleged in the later Abbott cases, but rather that the formula itself failed to account for Lakewood’s unique circumstances. The petitioners sought sweeping remedies including forgiveness of state loans, reimbursement for unfunded mandates, increases in state aid, and legislative adjustments to ensure equitable treatment for Lakewood students. They insisted that the inadequacies of the district could not be explained away as local failures but were instead a product of structural inequities embedded in the formula.
The Acting Commissioner of Education reached a different conclusion. After a comprehensive review conducted by the Department of Education with assistance from outside consultants, the Commissioner determined that Lakewood’s inability to provide a constitutionally adequate education was not caused by SFRA. Instead, the record revealed a pattern of fiscal mismanagement, failure to raise adequate local revenue, and a refusal to adopt cost-saving measures in both transportation and special education. Auditors identified weak financial controls, a lack of transparency, and expenditures inconsistent with state standards. Transportation practices, such as courtesy busing and inadequate route management, inflated costs unnecessarily. In special education, the district declined to expand in-district placements or apply for additional aid tied to its unusually high incidence of certain disabilities. The Commissioner concluded that while Lakewood students were indeed suffering educational deprivation, the cause was not the formula itself but the district’s governance decisions.
The Appellate Division affirmed that conclusion. Applying a deferential standard of review to the Commissioner’s factual findings, the court agreed that SFRA was constitutional as applied to Lakewood and that the ongoing deprivation could not be attributed “in significant part” to the statute. At the same time, the court emphasized that the plight of Lakewood’s children was both real and urgent. It noted that remedies remained available to the state, including the installation of a monitor, enhanced oversight, or targeted financial interventions, and it urged the Department of Education to pursue such measures in order to safeguard students’ rights.
The implications of Alcantara extend well beyond Lakewood. The decision signals that courts are unlikely to dismantle SFRA or carve out exceptions for individual districts absent overwhelming evidence of constitutional failure directly attributable to the statute. It also reinforces the principle that local districts bear primary responsibility for raising revenue and managing expenditures responsibly. Yet the case also serves as a reminder that the state’s obligation under the Constitution is nondelegable. When local mismanagement threatens to deprive children of a thorough and efficient education, the state cannot stand by indefinitely.
For families in Middlesex, Somerset, and Union Counties, the lessons of Lakewood are sobering. Districts in these regions may not face the precise demographic imbalance of Lakewood, but many share pressures that strain resources. In Perth Amboy and New Brunswick, high numbers of English Language Learners require substantial investments in bilingual education. In Plainfield, fiscal oversight has been the subject of recurring disputes. Somerset County, while wealthier on average, includes rural areas where transportation costs for specialized placements can consume disproportionate shares of the budget. Across these counties, parents frequently encounter difficulties securing special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and its New Jersey counterpart, administered by the New Jersey Department of Education.
The constitutional right to education remains enforceable in these contexts. Families have the ability to file petitions with the Department of Education, and adverse determinations can be appealed to the Office of Administrative Law. When local districts fail to provide appropriate transportation under N.J.S.A. 18A:39-1, or when they resist creating in-district special education programs, parents can challenge those decisions and seek relief. The Alcantara case demonstrates both the limits of formulaic litigation and the continuing role of individualized advocacy.
For school boards and administrators, the decision highlights the necessity of transparency and fiscal discipline. Courts will not rescue districts that ignore cost-saving recommendations or fail to adopt prudent revenue measures. Where children’s constitutional rights are at stake, the state may intervene, but only after local remedies have been exhausted.
For parents, the case underscores the importance of vigilance. Access to a thorough and efficient education is not abstract. It includes the right to qualified teachers, reasonable class sizes, early childhood programs, and appropriate services for children with disabilities. When those rights are compromised, legal remedies exist. A well-documented record of deprivation, coupled with legal representation, can make the difference between years of delay and meaningful reform.
At Student Rights Defense, we represent families across New Jersey, including Middlesex, Somerset, and Union Counties, in disputes involving education rights. Our work includes challenging inadequate services, pursuing appeals when special education programs fall short, and holding districts accountable when financial mismanagement undermines students’ constitutional protections. The lessons of Alcantara v. Allen-McMillan are clear: while the state may be reluctant to declare funding statutes unconstitutional, it recognizes the real harm experienced by students in struggling districts. Protecting children’s educational rights requires persistence, advocacy, and, in some cases, litigation.
The Lakewood decision is both a cautionary tale and a call to action. It cautions that courts will defer to the state’s chosen funding mechanisms so long as they remain facially constitutional. Yet it also calls upon parents, advocates, and policymakers to act when local failures deprive children of their constitutional rights. In Middlesex, Somerset, and Union Counties, as in Lakewood, those rights are not theoretical. They are the foundation of a child’s opportunity to learn, to grow, and to achieve. The law provides the tools to defend them.