The following story has been supported in part by a grant from NJ Spotlight, a Village Green news partner. The grant supports NJ reporting that localizes statewide issues in the November election.
With a statewide lawsuit regarding the segregation of New Jersey public schools — the seventh-most segregated state for Black and Latino students — continuing to be mediated in the courts, the next governor of New Jersey may be tasked with enforcing an eventual remedy. Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli have both pointed to the Interdistrict Public School Choice program in their policy statements, but with differing takes.
Meanwhile, the South Orange-Maplewood School District is now in Year 5 of its “Intentional Integration Initiative” — a plan created to end decades of racial imbalance in the district’s K-8 schools. The district reported earlier this year that 5 of 6 elementary schools and both middle schools are now within a targeted range of racial balance, using socioeconomic status data for placements.
That SOMSD integration plan, which has already experienced changes to its transportation delivery and the addition of a transfer portal, may be facing its biggest changes yet.
South Orange-Maplewood Supt. of Schools Jason Bing announced on October 14 that he is recommending changes to the integration plan’s placement variance — from +-5% to +/-10%, or spans of 10% and 20%, respectively.
Bing also said that he would recommend the integration plan, or “Triple I,” for K-5 only beginning next school year — removing the two middle schools — and that the district was looking at comprehensive zoning models in order “to reduce busing needs and maintain integration goals in a balanced, sustainable way. The district plans to work with the community around such work via strategic planning, Town Halls and Community Conversations.”
Bing indicated that the changes were related to a looming “fiscal cliff” that the district is facing, saying that transportation costs, which are exceeding $10.5 million per school year, “are being closely analyzed as the district explores models to reduce expenses while protecting educational programs.” Bing named the Intentional Integration Initiative as one of the transportation cost drivers, along with students being transported out of district and pre-K transportation.
The announcement came at a South Orange-Maplewood School District Community Conversation held at Columbia High School on October 14, and has caused a buzz in the community.
Already, two separate slates of candidates for the Board of Education had announced different approaches to the Triple I, with one slate saying any changes could erode the goals of integration and the other saying that changes must be made to ensure success and community buy-in.
Candidates Daniel Caplan, Ashley Donahue and Ashwat Rishi, who are running together on the Progress Partnership Promise slate, expressed an openness to investigating an expansion of the variance — “but only if the change did not impact the intent of the Triple I” and was supported by data.
At the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race’s October 6 forum, Caplan said he wanted to look at data to “compare pre and post Triple I to see what we’re looking at as far as academic difference.” Caplan also said, “we need to be smarter about when we place students avoiding isolated placements where it results in a loss of community. What we could do better is to microcluster neighborhoods and get four or five students from a street together from the same socioeconomic tier, which has knock-on effects that will help the budget.”
Meanwhile Paul Stephan, Malini Nayar and Meredith Higgins, who are running together on the Listen Learn Lead slate, said they supported letting the 5% variance remain as is and give the Triple I more time to play out.
“It will take time to see the impact of Triple I because Triple I is a generational framework,” said BOE candidate Malini Nayar. “It is not a framework for a two or three year plan that rolls out integration and we can then roll it back.”
“Changing the variance will only dismantle the progress that we have made so far,” said Nayar.
The Nayar Stephan and Higgins campaign reinforced that stance after Bing’s October 14 announcement. In a fundraising email on October 16, the campaign wrote that Bing “announced plans that would, if implemented, re-segregate the elementary schools on socioeconomic lines.” That language has been echoed by two former BOE presidents who wrote, “A 10% variance may sound minor, but in practice, it reintroduces segregation.”
On October 28, Bing sent an email to district families, stating that the district remained “100%” comment to integration: “We want to emphatically reaffirm that our decades-long commitment to integration is unwavering. This remains both an ethical, legal and moral imperative for SOMSD — and a core priority. The SOMSD Intentional Integration Initiative is not being eliminated. Any changes we make to our current model of integration with our expert consultants, the Alves Group, will be to strengthen its operational and financial sustainability. This work can only be done with community engagement and feedback.”
Some “SOMA” Background
South Orange and Maplewood — often self-referentially called SOMA or MapSO — are two separate municipalities that share a school district. The combined population of the towns is about 44,000, with approximately 7,000 students in the public school system.
Using 2020 Census data, the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race reported the towns’ combined demographics in 2022 as 8.6% Hispanic of any race, 26.1% Black, 53.6% White, 6.6% Asian, and 5.6% two or more races.
In recent years, the two towns have prided themselves on their diversity. In the mid-1990s, local leaders created the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race to combat “white flight” as well as bring diverse members of the community together for conversations and build community. The Coalition’s Schools Committee hosts an annual Board of Education candidates forum that is must-see viewing for local voters.
However, long-term gaps have existed in achievement, outcomes and opportunities for Black students in the school district. Access & Equity and Academic Placement policies passed by the Board of Education in 2015 failed to move the needle on those gaps, as did de-leveling efforts.
In 2020, the district reached a settlement with the Black Parents Workshop which sued SOMSD over racial disparities in the schools.
The effort to create the Triple I predates that lawsuit, although the settlement broadly required desegregation. Most of the settlement has focused on the opportunity gap, with the district commissioning a study by Dr. Eddie Fergus at Rutgers University. The district is now working to implement 23 recommendations from the study through its Rutgers/Fergus committee.
[Village Green published a history of desegregation efforts in South Orange-Maplewood in collaboration with NJ Spotlight in 2023; read it here.]
At his presentation of Triple I placement data in June 2025, South Orange-Maplewood Asst. Supt. of Schools Dr. Kevin Gilbert noted, “Just to remind people, the purpose of our algorithm is to help build diversity through our student placement process based on socioeconomic status, and it’s happening in our elementary and our middle schools. But I just want to caution people that this is only one part of our integration effort. Moving students is only one way we do that. We’re trying to deeply embed integration or inclusivity throughout our schools, through our implementation of our Rutgers equity audit recommendations and other aspects.”
What do the experts say?
An interview with Nancy McArdle and Michael Alves of The Alves Group — the South Orange-Maplewood district’s integration consultant — Alves noted the achievement of the Triple I: “In 2020-21, … the share of Kindergarten students at Seth Boyden Elementary who were Low SES was 43 percentage points above the District average (across all Kindergarten students). In contrast, by 2024-25, the share of Kindergarten students at Seth Boyden who were Low SES was just 4 percentage points above the District average. The III also dramatically reduced the significant over-representation of Black students and under-representation of White students at Seth Boyden that had existed prior to III’s introduction.”
Alves commended the district on adopting the transfer policies, which he said he had recommended from the beginning.
“You need to have a mechanism where a parent could apply to be transferred to a school they prefer, but always be subject to integration,” said Alves. “In other words, you don’t use a transfer policy as an escape valve. So the point is, you don’t like the school you got, even though you, your child could live across the street, but the idea is wherever you’re going to go, the school is going to be integrated. And as long as they maintain an integration criteria to the transfers, they’re fine.”
Alves was more circumspect on changes to the variance or algorithm.
“With regard to any potential change to the algorithm, it is critical to test its effects on integration,” Alves emphasized. “Weighing the relative costs and benefits to algorithm changes is a key responsibility of the school board and administration.”
Nancy McArdle of the Alves Group further explained, “We’re still working on [testing changes to the variance], continuing the conversation with the administration about doing work on that. You didn’t get a big increase in the share of kids that are going to their closest school. Part of it is because a very substantial chunk — about half, give or take, of students — are preassigned anyway. They’re preassigned to their school because they have a sibling priority or they have a special ed or a multi-language placement.”
“So we aren’t seeing a really big effect, at least, going into variances that we’ve looked at so far in terms of the increase in the number of students who are going to their closest school. But it’s a trade off,” said McArdle, adding, “There is some increase for sure, but it’s a trade off that I think comes down to the school board’s decisions of how they balance those things. And it’s unfortunate that transportation has been so difficult.”
Alves said that the variance must be tested to ensure that it is appropriate for each community and that Alves Group has no set recommended variance but “you can’t have a plan where you adopt a variance where you have no integration at all.”
“I think that the 10% is fine, we can go to 10%,” said Alves. “That’s not an issue if that makes sense. But again, the real issue here is what is the root cause of people still upset about transportation? That’s really more important, because it’s not the variance.”
Creating Two Zones
Alves said he was flummoxed on why SOMSD is struggling so much with transportation. The South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education had voted to end “courtesy” busing with the second year of the Triple I but had failed to do community outreach on the decision. Parents were caught off-guard when they found out weeks before the 2022-23 school year that they didn’t have a bus for their students. After heated debate, courtesy busing was restored in 2023, but the start of the school year continues to be plagued with routing issues and late pickups and drop-offs.
“I’ve done gigantic plans. Wake County, North Carolina —180,000 kids, so forth and Boston and so forth. Nancy and I have been trying to understand why is transportation so difficult” in South Orange and Maplewood, said Alves.
“The actual assignment of kids closest to their home — usually that does not create a transportation issue,” said Alves. He said that Alves Group had begun working on creating two school zones — made up of three elementary schools each and demographically and educationally equivalent — in order to reduce route lengths and transportation costs.
“We feel if we go to two zones, in other words, keep the algorithm and you can figure out what kind of variance you want. But the whole purpose would be self-contained,” said Alves. “That you live in one zone or the other, and that’s your three schools, and you get assigned to the school nearest your home when they have to figure out some kids be inter-zone. But that should contain the busing.”
“My approach has always been to mediate legitimate interest,” said Alves. “And if we have a legitimate issue driving transportation, let’s work on that.”
Read Alves and McArdle’s full written responses attached below.
Thoughts from SOMSD Leaders
In response to a question about the success of Triple I and the progress of the Rutgers recommendations, Supt. Jason Bing said that “Intentional integration has met its original intent, +-5% socioeconomic disparity” and stressed the additional work of staff — “our curriculum team, teachers, and administrators” who “have worked diligently to ensure instruction is culturally responsive and truly meets the needs of every student. Our commitment to tiered supports in the classroom, social-emotional learning, and the addition of new resources in both math and ELA have been critical steps in advancing equity and access. These efforts align closely with our work through Rutgers University, which have been an important guide in shaping our work toward remedying systemic inequities and creating stronger opportunities for all students.”
Regarding statewide issues of segregated schools, Bing noted that “The question of diversity in schools is deeply rooted in a long history of racial inequities in education, both in New Jersey and across the nation. There is no single remedy that will fully diversify our schools. Our communities made a decision to focus on the integration of schools some years ago, we’ve met the objective of +-5% socioeconomic difference in schools and have brought students together. The effort requires monitoring and adjustments every year to ensure its fidelity through data analysis. SOMSD wants to create a school community that supports every child and connects families to the resources and learning needed to foster both the academic and social well-being of their children.”
Read Bing’s full responses attached below.
BOE President Nubia DuVall Wilson — whose term ends in January and who is not pursuing reelection — said that from a “purely statistical perspective the Intentional Integration Initiative can be considered successful because our elementary schools now appear balanced from a socioeconomic standpoint. However, student demographics in school (which will impact a student’s experience in the classroom) is not solely a data point; from a racial lens, the picture is more complex.'” She wrote, “Anecdotally Black families have shared with me that they preferred their child to be in a mostly BIPOC environment in school (e.g., be at Seth Boyden, which for years had a voluntary opt-in program to help increase diversity) vs. now being ‘the only Black kid in class’.”
“We cannot legally integrate students by race, yet we track that data in our schools,” said DuVall Wilson, adding that she remained “deeply concerned about the declining presence of Black students in our district. Families are moving away, choosing private schools, or deciding not to relocate to South Orange and Maplewood in the first place.” DuVall Wilson said she commended the work of the Coalition on Race to “survey and understand why Black families are choosing other towns, as well as market our two towns as an inviting place to live for Black families.”
“It is also important to recognize that most of the Rutgers Recommendations address middle and high school remedies, while the Intentional Integration Initiative is most felt in the K–5 years. Our middle schools were already relatively balanced racially, and in fact, they were never initially intended to be part of the III,” said DuVall Wilson. “Their inclusion was a late-stage decision that, in my view, was not necessary, based on the data. The Board has had conversations with the district to consider phasing out that component. A natural progression of diverse student populations into the middle schools can occur through a permanent, designated feeder structure from each elementary school.”
DuVall Wilson concluded, “I greatly value the role of the Rutgers Recommendations and the accountability they have brought. The district, working closely with the Black Parents Workshop and in collaboration with the Board’s oversight, has made significant strides in tracking and implementing those recommendations. As we enter the final year of the settlement, the key question becomes: what comes next? My position is that the district should treat these changes not as temporary fixes but as the foundation for a culture of continuous monitoring and improvement. This will ensure that equity and access remain guiding principles well beyond the life of the settlement.”
Read DuVall Wilson’s full responses attached below.
Thoughts from Former SOMSD Leaders
In a two-part opinion piece submitted to Village Green on October 28 (attached below), two former BOE Presidents — Thair Joshua, under whose leadership the Triple I was initially implemented, and Dr. Qawi Telesford — wrote, “Thoughtful discussions about implementation are always welcome, but critics of III often use misleading narratives to question its purpose or effectiveness.” Telesford and Joshua wrote that the proposal to increase the variance from 5% to 10% “was already evaluated and deemed inappropriate. In their Year One Report for III, consultants Michael Alves and Tracy McArdle concluded, after running beta models at both 5% and 10%, “that the ±5% variance was best suited as the integration metric for the SOMSD.”
“Raising the variance to 10% would reverse progress, returning us to the pre-III reality where schools were stratified by income,” wrote Telesford and Joshua. “A 10% variance may sound minor, but in practice, it reintroduces segregation. It’s also worth noting that 5% variance was never meant to be perfect; it’s a reasonable target compared with 0% variance, which would be operationally unrealistic. The 5% threshold reflects a balance between precision and practicality, recognizing the need for system flexibility rather than perfection.”
The two former BOE presidents also wrote, “A persistent misunderstanding is the belief that integration depends on transportation. It does not. When III was introduced, the district did not expand busing because it lacked the capacity to do so; the district had already outsourced most of its fleet and 80% of routes in the previous decade, and budgets were constrained. … Transportation supports access, but it does not create integration. It was prudent for the Board to expand courtesy transportation to all elementary schools, but the recent transportation problems have been incorrectly framed as being caused by integration. Integration is not about buses or routes; it is about what happens in the classroom: who learns together and how we ensure that every child feels equally seen and supported.”
“The Intentional Integration Initiative represents the best of who we are. It is not a numbers exercise,” wrote Telesford and Joshua. “Rather, it is a moral statement about what kind of community we want to be. III affirms that every child deserves access to diverse classrooms, shared experiences, and equal opportunity.”
