'Last in, first out' policy protecting NJ teachers with seniority will stay put

New Jersey's "last in, first out" policy that protects teachers with seniority from losing their jobs isn't going anywhere.

The New Jersey Supreme Court said it won't review a lower-court ruling that had dismissed a lawsuit challenging the long-standing policy. The decision ends a two-year battle to overturn the statute. 

“We are incredibly disappointed that public school parents whose children have suffered ongoing harm due to antiquated layoff laws have been denied their day in court," the Partnership for Educational Justice, the group that filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. 

The decision means parents have exhausted appeals in the case, which was first filed in November 2016 in state Superior Court in Mercer County against the state Board of Education, the commissioner of education and Newark Public Schools. 

The Partnership for Educational Justice filed HG v. Harrington on behalf of a dozen Newark students. The suit argued that tenure laws and job protections make it almost impossible to fire an incompetent or ineffective teacher.

Teachers' unions, however, say seniority protections help keep experienced teachers in the classroom and prevent schools from targeting veteran teachers, who are the highest paid, for budget reasons. 

Steve Baker, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the state, said the state has an evaluation system in place in which teachers can be fired if they receive consistently poor evaluations.

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"We've said from the beginning that the case was unfounded and misguided," Baker said. "Tenure and seniority statutes are an important protection against the interference of politics in hiring and employment in public schools. We are pleased that the judge recognized that the case did not have merit."

Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson, who dismissed the lawsuit last year, said the plaintiffs did not prove that any students had been harmed or deprived of a "thorough and efficient education" as mandated under the state constitution.

The Partnership for Educational Justice, a group formed by former television news anchor Campbell Brown, has filed similar lawsuits in New York and Minnesota. The group said that although the lawsuit had failed in New Jersey, it had succeeded in raising awareness on the issue of teacher seniority protections.