Evesham Council approves litigation against Evesham Board of Education over closure of Evans Elementary School

Evesham Township Council has authorized the township to file a lawsuit against the Evesham Township Board of Education regarding the board’s decision to close Evans Elementary School.

Council approved the resolution authorizing the lawsuit at its April 26 meeting, although Mayor Randy Brown said he did not want to give specifics about the lawsuit until it was officially filed with the courts.

However, Brown did say the BOE “violated multiple statues in this state and in this town” and made repeated references to the school board not following the proper “process” in its decision to close Evans.

To that end, Brown also raised questions about the validity of the demographer and demography report the district used when it was considering whether to close Evans.

“They voted to close a school without doing a process through it, without checking on facts and figures and statistics,” Brown said.

Brown said the district used a “faulty” demographer who failed to get the necessary information from the township regarding new homes, townhouses and apartments that are planned.

Brown said the demography information the township had compiled was not new information, and was already available before the board voted to close Evans.

According to Brown, after the board voted to close Evans, the township still tried to schedule a meeting with the district’s demographer to present the township’s information, but Brown said the district’s demographer told township officials he could not meet with them.

“When we file, and everybody sees what should have happened, as I stated that night (the night the BOE voted to close Evans) they weren’t ready in an hour, they weren’t ready in a week, they weren’t ready in a month to make that decision,” Brown said.

Councilmember Steve Zeuli noted it was regrettable the township had come to its decision to sue the BOE, but he said the township felt there were “errors in the process” when the board voted to close Evans.

Zeuil said he hoped the lawsuit would give the BOE more time to consider its decision and the demography information from the township that board members did not have at the time of their vote.

“I’m not going to categorically tell you I’m against closing a school, but what I am categorically against is running through the process without being accountable to it and to at least being interested in some of the information that’s probably going to change your mind,” Zeuli said.

Regarding the lawsuit, Councilmember Debbie Hackman said council had met with members of the board, but regrettably the two sides were at an impasse and so council decided to move forward with litigation.

“It wasn’t a rushed decision,” Hackman said. “We went back and forth quite a bit, and we felt it was in the best interest of the community.”

With the board’s decision to close Evans, Councilmember Bob DiEnna said there were “requirements of that process” of which the township had no control, with the exception of township officials being “entrusted with enforcing” certain “details.”

“We would be remiss if we didn’t take a position of making sure all the terms and conditions have been considered,” DiEnna said.

The BOE voted to close Evans Elementary School at its March 17 meeting in response to what district officials have categorized as years of declining enrollment.

Evesham Township School District Superintendent John Scavelli Jr. has repeatedly outlined that while district enrollment peaked at 5,436 students in the 2002–2003 school year, the number of students in the district has fallen by about a 1,000 students to 4,440 students in this current school year.

In the past, Scavelli has said district demography studies predict a continuation of that trend, with the district left with 4,080 students in the 2020–2021 school year.

Scavelli has also said closing Evans would save the district about $1.4 million and would help the district avoid larger class sizes and cuts to staff that would otherwise become necessary in the coming years.

Scavelli and BOE solicitor William Donio could not be reached for comment at the time this article was published.

When Brown was asked if the township had a specific filing date in mind for the lawsuit, his only response was “we’ll see.”