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8-8-07 Editorial 'School [construction] program needs more than a facelift'

STAR LEDGER School program needs more than a facelift      Wednesday, August 08, 2007

“…The Legislature ought to proceed cautiously until the management of the newly named New Jersey Schools Development Authority can demonstrate that more than a name change has occurred and a solid revenue source has been identified…”

The Schools Construction Corp., that spendthrift state agency charged with building and repairing New Jersey schools, is no more. It's been replaced with the New Jersey Schools Development Authority, and state leaders assure that the phrase most often used to describe the SCC -- scandal- plagued-- won't apply to its successor. Maybe. But it's going to take more than a name change to right what's wrong with the school construction program.

Granted the NJSDA moniker became official only Monday, when Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation establishing the new agency and handing it more power than its predecessor had.

Still, the overhaul of the building program has been under way for some time. It began in 2005 after The Star- Ledger reported the SCC built schools that cost, on average, 45 percent more than those built by local boards of education. A subsequent state investigation concluded that the SCC was badly mismanaged and had squandered taxpayers' dollars.

In the past two years, the name plates on many SCC offices have changed and a series of reforms were instituted. There is more professionalism -- but still not enough.

What's happening on Dewey Street in Newark is illustrative.

In March, the SCC promised that while it was waiting for the money to build more schools, it would demolish vacant houses on the land the agency had purchased as school sites.

Dewey Street is one of those sites. The once-solid neighborhood was disassembled to build University High, a school that the SCC did not have money to construct. The agency's action left a ghost town of homes -- ideal havens for va grants and drug dealers. So the state demolished most of the empty houses.

That's good, but what re mains five months later is big piles of rubble and old mattresses. The street is littered with carpets, old furniture, lumber and bags of trash. The NJSDA says other people are throwing trash on the site. The city bears some responsibility for allowing trash to accumulate, but if people are dumping, it may be be cause the authority has turned Dewey Street into what cer tainly looks like a dump.

The agency did not put deadlines into its contracts as a way to require the completion of phases of a project within de fined periods of time. That failure to build in accountability is what caused many of the SCC's problems in the past.

If the Dewey Street demolition was supposed to be an example of how the new school construction agency functions, why should anyone be encouraged?

And even if the new agency becomes more efficient and is tighter with the taxpayers' bucks, a major problem re mains: how to pay for more new schools.

The initial $8.6 billion approved by the Legislature under court order is either spent or already allocated. With that money, the SCC built 32 schools and 25 major additions and made nearly 400 health and safety repairs. Another 28 schools are under construction, and nine more are in the pipeline. Initially, plans called for at least 100 other schools to be built.

But no new projects are planned simply because there is no more money. The authority wants the Legislature to approve another $3.25 billion. And where would lawmakers get the money? From the Economic Development Authority, which has bank rolled the other school construction. And where does the EDA, a supposedly independent agency, get the funds? It goes to the state treasurer.

All of this comes as the governor is talking about the urgent need to reduce the state's debt. His plan to monetize the state's assets -- such as the Turnpike and Parkway -- is intended to provide money to lower that debt. That's all that's known for sure about Corzine's proposal.

Numbers like $20 billion and $30 billion have been bandied about, but the governor's not talking any specifics. Could some of that money be used for schools? Maybe.  How much? Who knows?

The Legislature ought to proceed cautiously until the management of the newly named New Jersey Schools Development Authority can demonstrate that more than a name change has occurred and a solid revenue source has been identified.