How Racism Caused Asbury Park Taxes To Rise

With Asbury Park’s tax bills exploding this month (again), let’s not forget the racist government policies that created them.  

For a century Asbury Park High School taught kids from Lake Como to Deal (Ocean and Loch Arbor left in the 60’s).  These were “sending districts” to the high school.

Together these 7 small towns equal Asbury’s population.  They are also White.  Avon, Interlaken, Allenhurst and Deal are middle class to wealthy. Combined with the poor Black, White and Brown kids in Asbury, it created a multi-ethnic, linguistic, religious and economic student body that reflected the local demography.

And it was glorious.  Ask any Blue Bishop who went there before 1997.

What happened in 1997?  Two terrible things.

Issue One:  The Music Case

By then Red Bank Regional High School, a public school, began signing up kids from Asbury’s sending districts.  How? They had a music program for which a student could audition.  If accepted, they got bused all the way to Red Bank.

Asbury noticed their White student numbers dwindling and the loss of funds following those students to Red Bank, so Asbury sued to stop it.

The Administrative Law Judge complained that Asbury’s lawyer repeatedly disregarded discovery demands and deadlines.  Five deadlines, to be exact.  The Judge made the rare move to decide the case  without Asbury’s evidence (can you blame him?).  Obviously, Asbury lost. The likely evidence not submitted was reports on de facto racial segregation.   Years later, Asbury Park’s lawyer was disbarred.

The case was appealed to the State Board of Education in 1997.  They ruled that the evidence (or lack of it by Asbury) showed Red Bank’s music program was so superior to Asbury’s, it justified the kids being bused to Red Bank. 

But there was another issue lurking beneath the surface: race.

If white students from the sending districts were leaving Asbury for Red Bank while Black students remained behind, the result was obvious. Whatever the legal justification for the music program, the practical effect was racial separation.

Because of Asbury's failure to present the necessary evidence, however, the State Board did not have the evidentiary record it needed to confront that issue.  Only Wendel E. Daniels, a Black NJ Board of Education member (and later Superior Court Judge), opposed the decision.

Suddenly every White kid from South Belmar to Deal decided to study the oboe or something, because nearly the whole White student population bolted from Asbury to Red Bank.  The grammar schools in the sending districts had staff coaching kids for their Red Bank music audition.

I recall an Asbury Park City Council meeting a few years ago when a young Black woman, a recent Asbury grad, asked: “When I see class pictures hanging on the walls, it looks like space aliens kidnapped all the White kids in 1997?  How’d that happen?”

The Red Bank music decision is how that happened.  Her question sadly reveals Black kids in Asbury know they’ve been segregated, but they don’t know why.

Asbury could have fixed this by creating a superior music program, then going back to court.  We are a music city, right?  I asked local musicians to help create one.   No interest.   I cringe when I see those shirts, “Music Saved Asbury Park.”   Not in 1997 it didn’t.  In 1997 “Music Abandoned Asbury Park.”

After that, segregation got easier:  The State allowed our sending districts to change to either Manasquan or Shore Regional High School with no thought to intentional or de facto race separation.

This is old-fashioned state sponsored racial segregation – the same school bussing issue fought in the South in the 1960s. 

This left Asbury High School with a monolithic student body, just impoverished kids, who were also now segregated by race (don’t get me started on what the Charter Schools did to that situation).

Over the years I would relate this to new Board of Ed members, City Councils, Assemblymembers and Senators,  and get blank stares.  To raise awareness I tried to do a TedxAsburyPark presentation. They turned me down for a speech about mountain climbing, which of course is a priority in Asbury Park.  Good grief.

If this happened in the South activists would be parachuting in to stop it. Yet Asbury and its activists didn’t complain.  Why?  That brings us to issue #2. 

Asbury became complicit in this racism, so this might get uncomfortable.

Issue #2:  Abbott Funding and “Segregation Hush Money”

While the Red Bank Music decision was winding its way through the administrative court, the Abbott school funding cases were heard at the NJ Supreme Court.

Abbott funding can be summed up thusly:

The NJ Constitution says education must be “thorough and efficient.”  Our meddlesome Supreme Court decided that can only be achieved through lots of money, no matter how many times that hypothesis has been proven false through experimentation.

Abbott identified 31 districts in need of this money, and Asbury Park was one of them.  The final Abbott ruling that unleashed an ocean of State money came in 1997-98, only  months after the above Music case was decided.

The Abbott money suddenly available to Asbury was enormous.  Some years up to $55 million dollars.  Our per pupil spending shot to over $43,000 annually.  The statewide average was $16,000.00.

This money became Asbury’s crack pipe.  We were addicted to it.  It was boom years for people running the schools – wasteful spending too delicious to quit.  They could waste State money without raising local taxes, so no one local cared.

Here is how Abbott ties into the Music decision:  School qualification for Abbott money partly depended on the wealth of the families in the school. 

So Asbury had a decision to make: Challenge the Music case and bring back Avon, Interlaken, Allenhurst, Deal and the rest to be racially integrated again, but if they do, likely lose all that Abbott money.

Instead, Asbury stayed silent on their own kids being racially segregated.   “Leaders” took the “segregation hush money” and had a ball.  The Music case stayed law.

I used to say to Asbury leaders, “Let’s bring the White kids back.”  The response was,  “And lose all that money?  No way.”

I used to say to sending district parents complaining about income taxes, “Put your White kids back in Asbury with the Black kids and save $55 million a year.”   Their response was, “On second thought Asbury, just keep that money.”

Abbott had no natural predator in Asbury, so it lingered.  Imagine the irony of having an Asbury grammar school named Thurgood Marshall while also having a racially segregated high school.  Is anything more nerve-grating than a phony virtue signal?

Educationally, Abbott flunked. State-wide college readiness decreased 3% among Black and Latino students. In Asbury, we remained at the bottom of State rankings in math and reading.  The very bottom.  Look it up.

But the people running the schools?  Boy did they have fun with that $55 million annually.

Abbott became so unpopular state-wide, in 2008 the State passed a new funding formula, but the Supreme Court in 2011 restored funding levels to  Abbott districts.  All that was accomplished was removing the tarnished name Abbott.

In 2018 Governor Murphy threw away the crack pipe with the “S2” school funding law.  It phased out Abbott level funding over the past 7 years. In the past 7 years, Asbury property taxes have doubled or tripled for most properties. Cause and effect.

The city Board of Ed leaders had a choice – tighten their own belts.  Lay off workers.  Cut spending.  Cut salaries. Cut programs. Sell schools. Close schools. Consolidate.

Or they could just raise your taxes.  Guess which they did? 

Asbury is now paying for their segregation hush money sins of the past, but the kids are still segregated.

How This Problem Can Be Solved

What am I, Einstein?  You think I can invent a magic bullet to kill this tax monster now? 

There is more than a half dozen tax-saving measures that can be implemented at the schools, with consolidation being the leader.  Discussing them here would make this piece too long.  I’m sure you can add to the list.

Hopefully Asbury Park starts discussing them with their leaders, City and State.