And, as the annual meeting wore down, Marlboro Superintendent David Abbott posed a question about school construction that might have applied to his peers' mood in general: "How do we see through all this fog any light at the end of the tunnel?"

State, suburban school execs confer, and little love is lost

Thursday, June 01, 2006

BY JOHN MOONEY

Star-Ledger Staff

Under the state's budget crisis, it hasn't been a good year -- make that couple of years -- for New Jersey's suburban schools, and the frustrations showed yesterday when top state officials came calling on many of the local leaders.

Acting Education Commis sioner Lucille Davy and school construction executive Scott Weiner didn't mince words before the an nual meeting of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, the chief ad vocacy group for the state's suburban schools.

Davy described bleak times for the schools in terms of overall funding, and Weiner, transitional chief executive of the embattled Schools Construction Corp., said that program's prospects remain a work in progress as well.

But the cool words went both ways, as local leaders grumbled in their seats and took exception afterward to ongoing criticism from the Corzine administration and the Legislature about everything from administrative perks to what Davy called the schools' "runaway spending."

"The issue is with the broad brush that's being applied to all of us," said Marjorie Heller, superintendent of Little Silver schools and the association's newly named president. "There are those who really resent the way everyone's been characterized."

"It's really tough times, and we need to get off these side issues," she said.

It was the Garden State Coalition's 15th annual meeting since the group was formed to give voice to specifically suburban districts.

The group has since grown to a membership of 125 districts, and with full-time executive director Lynne Strickland, it has become one of Trenton's most active lobby ing forces on education issues, especially around funding.

School funding was first and foremost at yesterday's breakfast meeting at the Forsgate Country Club in Monroe Township. The vast majority of the districts have seen little or no increases in state funding for five years, while facing new and controversial spending limits.

Davy, in her eighth month as acting commissioner, repeated Gov. Jon Corzine's pledge to re vamp how schools are paid for, especially in terms of their reliance on property taxes. She said a proposal still being drafted would include a more equitable formula for districts not covered under the state Supreme Court's Abbott vs. Burke rulings.

But she hardly pandered to her audience. "Is this going to mean half of your budgets will be paid for by state taxes? I don't think so, and out of the gate, we need to be honest about that," she said.

Davy then hammered at some sensitive topics, starting with a re cent state report of excessive administrative salaries and other benefits in some districts, including big payments for unused sick and va cation time.

"It is not enough anymore to say that these benefits were negotiated with their school boards, were signed off by the board attorneys, and that's just the way it is," she said. "The bottom line is that the climate we are living in today does not justify getting huge payouts for sick time anymore."

Weiner, who was brought in by Corzine to help repair the school construction program, was a little more upbeat but hardly had much good news to impart, either.

The SCC remains under repair after it was found to have been rife with waste and mismanagement in spending its allotted $8.6 billion on just a quarter of the promised projects for urban districts.

Weiner said new controls and management are being put in place, and he hoped to have a clearer sense by the end of summer of how any additional money would be distributed.

"We're looking very hard at how to make this better," he said. "We're hoping in the next few months that whatever the entity we have, we'll have the management in place to handle (the work)."

The program has had more suc cess in suburban districts, 80 percent of which received at least some construction money, but a few local officials said yesterday that they too have been left in the lurch.

The superintendent of a Bergen County district said she was still awaiting the final $1.1 million in promised payments on a completed project, a lag that Weiner could not explain.

And, as the annual meeting wore down, Marlboro Superintendent David Abbott posed a question about school construction that might have applied to his peers' mood in general: "How do we see through all this fog any light at the end of the tunnel?"

John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at jmooney@starledger.com or (973) 392-1548.