That litigation cost the district $150,000 from its deductible, and there are several other suits pending against the district, according to board attorney James Carroll.

While this superintendent’s lawsuit was the result of a decision by the district’s state fiscal monitor, Carroll said the amount of litigation Pleasantville experiences annually is still high. This is why the district is considering pursuing self-insurance and actively taking measures to reduce legal bills each year through training and protocol changes.

Court records show that in 2017, there were eight civil suits filed in Atlantic County Superior Court against the Pleasantville School District — most by district employees.

Because of all the lawsuits the district has faced over the years, it hasn’t been able to get into a joint insurance fund (JIF), which is a form of shared services that allows the pooling of resources for property, liability and employee compensation. 

In his budget address Thursday, Pleasantville Superintendent Clarence Alston noted the importance of the district reducing its litigation and, subsequently, its financial liability. The district is facing staffing cuts and reductions in state aid for a second year in a row.

“It means that we need to better utilize our existing funds. We need to control cost. We need to minimize legal fees and judgments against our district,” Alston wrote in his budget address.

Carroll said that becoming self-insured is a means to controlling those costs. He said because the district’s deductible is so high at $150,000 per case, there is little incentive for its private insurer, AIG, to settle fast and inexpensively.

“They’re not paying that first $150,000, the school board is,” he said. “When you’re self-insured, you’re going to check with those attorneys and say, ‘What are we doing? Can this be settled?’”

Carroll said he believes that in many cases, it can be resolved quickly and at a reduced cost. He said the district is implementing training continuously to preemptively address the problem.

“The first step is making sure that the administrators and the administration, as a whole, are aware of the rights of employees, and that they act in accordance with the personnel policies and the rights of the employees,” Carroll said.

While not all school districts deal with the same level of litigation as Pleasantville, there are high-cost settlements revealed each year from neighboring towns. Currently, there are suits pending against Egg Harbor Township, Greater Egg Harbor Regional, Lower Township and Wildwood schools, to name a few.

Most of those schools are covered by the Atlantic and Cape May County Association of School Business Officials Joint Insurance Fund, which covers 17 districts in the area, but not Pleasantville or Atlantic City.

Lou Greco, the attorney for the Atlantic, Cape JIF said that there are different methods for insuring a district against litigation, including JIFs, private insurance and self-insurance.

“The rules and all those relationships are different,” Greco said.

Greco said school districts participating in JIFs are assessed based on risk and then pay a premium into the fund annually based on that assessment.

“And that’s it, that’s their insurance expense,” he said.

According to its records, the Atlantic, Cape JIF paid out $1,308,203 in settlements in 2017, $1 million of which was related to auto loss. As of February, there are about 13 lawsuits pending for the JIF. Greco said that through the JIF, when a case is settled, the district incurs no additional cost.

“Since 1994, one of the things I that I have always been amazed about, when you consider the fact that in that fund we have maybe 20,000 students, I’ve always been amazed at the small level of claims given the activity level of schools,” Greco said.

Greco said the highest level of claims are usually workers compensation. Other claims include auto loss and general liability related to negligence, special education or employment matters.

He said the best way to avoid litigation is through training.

“The biggest part of it is what is the ‘safety culture’ of that school district. The really strong school districts have safety committees,” Greco said.

The committees will review dangerous exposures in the building and conduct employee training.

“If you do all of those things well and you have an active safety committee, over time the losses in those districts are far fewer than districts that have a lackadaisical attitude toward safety,” Greco said. “It’s really ongoing. It’s not 100 percent effective, but it can be very effective in keeping the number of claims down.”