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12-30-05 School Construction and Education Funding news clips
Philadelphia Inquirer, Trenton Times, Star Ledger, Herald News, Gannett.
Philadelphia Inquirer, Trenton Times, Star Ledger, Herald News, Gannett.
N.J. Schools Construction
Editorial | A sad state of disrepair
Editorial | A sad state of disrepair
Philadelphia Inquirer
January 3, 2006
The news about New Jersey's once-promising school construction program just gets worse.
"This inconsistent and often minimal oversight of project management firms created an environment conducive for enormous cost and schedule over-runs," the latest report from the state inspector general finds.
Management of the state Schools Construction Corp. was shoddy or nonexistent, top to bottom, concludes Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper.
The Dec. 21 report follows on a blistering April prelude, which found the agency ripe for waste, fraud and abuse. It's likely that millions of $8.6 billion borrowed at taxpayer expense was squandered in sloppy accounting, high land prices, exorbitant wages, lavish offices and bonuses.
That money was supposed to go to classrooms and kids in one of the nation's boldest investments in education. In 1998, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the state to fix hazardous buildings in the state's 30 poorest districts. In 2000, the Legislature extended the program to the suburbs, so all districts could improve conditions.
The idea was innovative; the execution abysmal.
After the first report, acting Gov. Richard Codey moved quickly with personnel and procedural changes, but there's more to do. The IG's latest remedies, though reasonable, read like a business school introductory course: Set up management oversight; train your employees. It's alarming and insulting to taxpayers that such basic suggestions come now – four years after the SCC's creation.
Codey is right to block legislative attempts to give the SCC a single penny more until management problems are rectified. At the same time, incoming Gov. Jon Corzine cannot put school construction on the backburner.
The state is littered with half-finished projects, and school districts don't know what to do.
Fortunately, the state Supreme Court has set a brisk timeline for action. On Dec. 19, the court also declined an immediate infusion of construction cash for the state's neediest schools, but it did set a Feb. 15 deadline for the state Education Department to tally costs for nearly 350 projects awaiting action.
Early projections suggest that meeting the court's 1998 order could cost $14 billion more. That's a lot of money, given the waste so far.
But parents and other school advocates said it best at a Dec. 22 rally in Trenton: "Our children should not pay for the mistakes of adults who are not doing their job."
New Jersey still has too many dilapidated, overcrowded, dangerous schools. The buildings impair children's learning and endanger their health.
The SCC has compounded that sin with ineptitude or, worse, corruption. The Corzine administration needs to use its business acumen to do better by New Jersey's schoolchildren.
More action, less talk
Editorial
The Times
January 3, 2006
Some strong words were exchanged last week over the controversial construction at the new Martin Luther King-Jefferson School in Trenton.
But once you get past the name-calling and finger-pointing, the common-sense comments from Joshua Leinsdorf, a former substitute teacher at one of the two merged schools and a member of the Princeton Regional Board of Education, should be heeded.
At issue is what to do with the pollution found in soil at the site, some of which allegedly was shipped in as fill, and a school already under construction. Tear down the partially completed structure, as nearby residents and some environmentalists have urged, or cap the site with cement and continue the long-delayed project?
Of course, tearing down the new school and starting over would drive up the costs from an original estimate of $28 million to as high as $75 million. Part of the higher cost would go toward making schools where King and Jefferson students are housed habitable in the meantime.
Enter Leinsdorf. Calling the Trenton school board, which has final say over tearing down or capping, "out of its mind" and criticizing Mayor Doug Palmer for knee-jerk reaction to neighbors' complaints, Leinsdorf noted that levels of harmful contamination are low, citing a report from a consultant with the School Construction Agency. He also branded the Sierra Club as racist because it was standing in the way of a new building badly needed for inner-city school children.
Palmer responded to the criticism with a sarcasm-laced retort about Princeton people telling Trenton what to do. The Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel called Leinsdorf an "idiot."
Leinsdorf may have gone too far in his criticism of the Sierra Club but he has injected a note of reality into this sad situation that is costing taxpayers a bundle. The truth is that much of Trenton, and to be fair, some of its contiguous suburbs, hold a lot of ground pollution from many of the old industrial sites in our area. You need look no further than the old W.R. Grace Zonolite site in Hamilton for an example of what is dangerous soil contamination.
There is bound to be some levels of PCBs and lead in our soil. The questions are how much and what can be done to remediate the problem.
Answering those questions in a rational way is how local officials should be reacting to the situation. Not, as Leinsdorf correctly pointed out, by reacting "out of proportion" to the reportedly low levels of contamination at the site.
Senior residents of block next to go
Newark school shelved but buyouts continue
By Dunstan McNichol
The Star-Ledger
January 2, 2006
Closing another chapter in the continuing demolition of Newark's once-thriving Dewey Street neighborhood, the state Schools Construction Corp. is scheduled this week to buy the home of James and Annie Searcy, the block's longest-standing residents.
The Searcys, who have lived at 28 Dewey St. for almost 45 years, plan to relocate to Georgia.
They are among just eight households left on the block, which for decades had been a model of stability until Newark selected it as the site of a new high school.
"It's going to be stressful moving out right now," said James Searcy, who, like his wife, is in his 70s. "But I think it's best for us, with the tax rates and the high crime."
Searcy said he is scheduled to receive $165,000 for the house -- about $40,000 more than the state offered last summer.
Over the past three years, the SCC has spent more than $12 million on preliminary work for the high school -- including $11.5 million acquiring property and relocating residents of Dewey Street and two adjoining blocks. The school itself was projected to cost $27 million when first proposed five years ago.
In July, however, the SCC suspended plans for the school, saying the $6 billion allotted by lawmakers for the statewide school construction program had been tapped out.
Still, the agency is continuing to buy out residents like the Searcys, who have been left stranded in the decimated neighborhood, surrounded by vacant, boarded-up homes and apartment buildings.
Along with the continuing campaign to purchase the remaining homes on Dewey Street, the SCC selected about 55 properties throughout the state where residents found themselves in neighborhoods rendered almost unlivable by widespread acquisitions designed to make way for schools the state has run out of money to build.
"The process is continuing, to close out the few remaining properties," SCC spokesman Kevin McElroy said.
The decline of the once-tidy block of Dewey Street hit a low point for the Searcys in August, when burglars broke into their shed and stole a lawnmower and tools. Around them, other homes have been stripped of fixtures and fittings as they sit empty.
Searcy's longtime neighbors, Charles and Minnie Sapp, relocated to Delaware earlier this year. They were among 10 Dewey Street residents who had lived on the block for more than 20 years when the SCC forced them to move. The Searcys, who moved to Dewey Street in 1961, were the longest-residing residents when the SCC began acquiring the block three years ago.
Even as he prepares to close the sale, James Searcy said he is puzzled by developments in the shadow of the SCC's ill-fated high school project.
Across the street, he noted, a new family is just settling into a three-story home that was erected last year, after the SCC had begun acquiring and boarding up homes on Dewey Street.
"Someone's rented the new house across the street," Searcy said. "I understand they're not going to build the school."
Dunstan McNichol covers state government issues. He may be reached at dmcnichol@starledger.com or (609) 989-0341.
After a year, Clifton no closer to building school
By Brian Spadora
Herald News
January 1, 2006
CLIFTON - At this time last year an end to overcrowding in the city's schools seemed in sight.
Voters had just approved borrowing $15.1 million for the purchase and renovation of an industrial building on Brighton Road into a school. The school, which the Board of
Education planned to open in September 2006, would serve 500 ninth-grade students.
The new school would reduce crowding at Clifton High School, which has about 3,400 students but should accommodate no more than 3,000, Superintendent Michael Rice has said.
The school board took another step in May, when it announced a proposal to expand the planned 500-student school into a 1,650-student school for the sixth through ninth grades.
That plan would eliminate crowding at the high school, at Christopher Columbus Middle
School and Woodrow Wilson Middle School, the school board said.
The board announced that voters would decide in December whether to borrow $49 million for the expansion.
That's when things started to go wrong.
A year after voters approved the 500-student school, construction has yet to begin.
The vote on the expansion was also delayed and will now be held on Jan. 24.
Before the industrial building could be converted into the 500-student school, the Board of Education had to seek a zoning variance, because Brighton Road is an industrial zone where schools are not permitted.
After more than 10 meetings, the Zoning Board of Adjustment has yet to vote on whether to grant the school board permission to build the school.
The plans have been delayed primarily due to opposition from two Brighton Road businesses - Van Ness Plastics and ProLogis - which argue that the school would hurt their operations.
But school officials have said William Van Ness, president of Van Ness Plastics, has another motive: self-interest.
In order to build the expanded school, the Board of Education plans to seize two parcels of land. One is owned by Van Ness Plastics, and Van Ness has said he planned to use it to expand his pet-products business.
Rather than wait to see if voters approve the plan to expand the school, Van Ness hired experts to testify before the zoning board against the plan that voters approved last year.
Van Ness has said his opposition to the 500-student school is sincere, though he has acknowledged that voters would be less likely to approve expanding the school if the zoning board has yet to approve the first phase.
The school district begins 2006 with almost as much uncertainty about plans for a new school as it had one year ago.
The zoning board will continue to hear the school board's case for the 500-student school at meetings scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.
No matter what happens before the zoning board, voters will decide on Jan. 24 whether to expand the school that has yet to be built.
If voters decide against the plan, the school board could choose another site.
If the plan is approved, the school board must seek another zoning variance.
Van Ness is likely to fight even harder against the expansion - meaning the school board could be in a similar position one year from now.
E-mail: spadora@northjersey.com
Education funding still a dilemma
By Gregory J. Volpe
Gannett New Jersey
December 30, 2005
TRENTON - Like any issue facing New Jersey government, the public education system is not immune to the fiscal problems facing the state.
State aid to school districts has been mostly frozen for years, and this year the state Schools Construction Corp. -- which has spent nearly all of its $8.6 billion, leaving more than 200 court-ordered projects in limbo -- was cited by the state inspector general for waste, inefficiency and the potential for fraud.
With rising property taxes -- the majority of which funds education -- parents predictably call for Gov.-elect Jon Corzine and the incoming Legislature to fix school funding, which already consumes about one-third of the state's $28 billion budget.
How to do so is a matter of debate.
"I don't have an answer for you on that," said Terri West, 42, president of the Lumberton PTA.
"I think they need to be creative in figuring things out."
Jerry Cantrell, 55, of Randolph, Morris County, wants the state to adopt a streamlined, formulaic approach -- first for curriculum standards, then for fairer funding.
If each district were teaching the same way, Cantrell reasoned, it could determine a per-pupil cost amount, then give a little more to poorer districts.
"If General Motors didn't have standards for what each automobile should fit into, or IBM with computers, then you just have willy-nilly products going out," said Cantrell, a father of two and former school board president who formed a local tax reform organization.
"I think that's what we have with education."
Some parents, echoing concerns of education groups like the New Jersey School Boards Association, want the state to abolish a law signed in 2004 by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey that limits the amount of surplus a district can store and reduces the amount it can increase spending each year.
"It's just that it's restrictive about what we can do," said Nancy Locascio, 43, a member of the Colts Neck PTO. Job cuts
According to the School Boards Association, the law has forced Colts Neck to eliminate five and a half teaching positions and an assistant principal, reduce its elementary school Spanish program and cut funding for extracurricular programs.
Locascio also hopes the state reconfigures school funding.
"My other wish would be we figure out how to fund education. I've only been in this state a couple of years, and the way they fund education is amazing to me," Locascio said.
"The simplistic version is for the amount of taxes we pay, we're still lacking in certain services."
Others have less complex, more idyllic funding wishes.
"I'd like to have more money put in the classroom and less on administrators," said Joanne DiBartolomeo, a mother from Cherry Hill.
"It's too top-heavy on the administrative end."
Joe Rahman, 45, a father from Maple Shade, said educators could cut costs by scrapping costly extras and focusing on teaching skills children need.
The basics
"I'm all for a strong education, but I want to get back to reading, writing and arithmetic," Rahman said. "I think we're getting too fancy for our kids."
Eric Wynn, 45, a Camden father, said he'd like to see more spent on school security to keep drugs and weapons out of schools.
"I don't fault the teachers. They try to do their job, but they need help," Wynn said.
Some parents complain about the state's standardized testing program -- an ever-increasing and evolving aspect of education.
A federal education law signed in 2002 will require further expansion of standardized testing in the years ahead.
"I have the same focus I've had for my entire children's education -- to focus on learning experientially, not just to take tests," said Shawna Kates, 50, a mother of two from Cherry Hill.
Judy Pellegrino, 41, a Maple Shade mother, said children have to do so much but aren't taught how to cope with all sorts of stress or how to take care of themselves.
A holistic health counselor by trade, Pellegrino said she'd like to see the subject taught in schools.
"Paradigm shift'
"Students need balance mentally. There's so many activities and students don't know how to keep their balance," Pellegrino said. "I do see a paradigm shift going on, and it would be so awesome to see something like this in the schools."
Unlike many, Melinda Jennis of Montville, a mother of a multiply disabled boy and president of a local parents group for exceptional children, doesn't call for increased funding to address her issue.
Jennis, 45, merely wants the state to reform the way it educates special-needs children. Jennis wants the state to stop paying high private tuition costs at special private schools and instead focus on teaching life skills and training for employment.
"You're looking at how successful we are actually being with these children. The millions that we're spending on them, all the time and effort we're spending litigating, and yet these children for the most part are still unemployed when they're done," Jennis said.
Reach Gregory J. Volpe at gvolpe@gannett.com
