we're excited to share a new project NJ Spotlight news is launching it's a collaboration with news organizations across the state examining segregation in New Jersey schools nearly 70 years after the U.S Supreme Court declared School segregation unconstitutional New Jersey's public school system is considered among the most segregated in the nation and a state Superior Court is expected to rule soon on a lawsuit trying to put an end to it all once and for all for more I'm joined by education writer and founding editor John Mooney and our senior projects editor Colleen O'Day good to have you both here with me John I'll start with you what exactly does this project launch into and how did we collaborate with these other organizations to bring these stories to life yeah I mean as you mentioned there's a lawsuit that is is expected literally any day but we've been saying that for a while to have a ruling on it and we thought why don't we bring some attention to it um both before during and after and so we we thought why don't we reach out to our partners large and small we're we're also teaming up with WNYC public radio and WHYY in Philly but also small hyper local news sites why don't we all get together write stories for our audience that relates to this a big piece of this is Colleen's data that she has provided to every hyper local that wants to use it and it allows folks to look up their own schools and Colleen what does the data say about our school districts just how segregated are they so it's it's really interesting I mean this our headline says it's complicated you know if you looked at the turn of the century about 75 percent of school districts in the state were roughly 80 percent white or more right non-hispanic white today that's down to only 25 percent of schools so that would seem to indicate that you know wow there's greater diversity which there is except when you look at this concentration of schools where it's typical that Black and Hispanic students wind up being also in very high poverty districts so so we've seen an increase in schools where black and brown students are the you know the vast majority 80 or more and certainly in Hispanic segregated schools which we didn't have at the the start of the century um there's been a tripling of the number of schools where 80 of more students are Hispanic John what's the relationship between the racial makeup of these schools and things like say state aid or property taxes items like that yeah I mean it they're obviously uh you know more predominantly urban districts we have a major School Equity case already with Abbott versus Burke which has provided a lot of money towards those districts offsetting some property certainly some property tax issues but one of the things that which is interesting about New Jersey is included in that avid case is we really didn't talk about race now it actually you know very purposely didn't get into race because it was such a hot button topic and so you know this is a conversation we've had locally but we haven't had Statewide before uh Colleen I think I cut you off a bit before talking about the data but what are the other factors that go into that and and the potential remedies because that's also a big part of this project yeah so you know we we've got some more reporting coming that that essentially says that when you look at these segregated schools the outcomes for students there are tend to be below when when you look at a school that's mostly white or that's that's desegregated a school that's diverse you know I think that we've seen some things that have happened both in New Jersey and in other states things like magnet schools maybe can work there have been districts like the more School District where towns were kind of forced to come to get together and combine and it's worked out fairly well John depending on the outcome of this lawsuit where do the districts go from here in terms of implementing any of those strategies yeah I mean at this point what's interesting this is really it is one of my quote one of the quotes in the story this is really the start of the race um you know hardly the end of it and it is really only asked the lawsuit's really only asking for you know who's responsible to fix this uh and pointing directly to the state the next step is in this order is is whether the state will then be ordered to come up with a plan so don't expect anything happening anytime soon on this John Mooney elino day for us thank you so much thank you