Abbott Schools - Courier - Aging buildings pressed into action in Abbott districts

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Published in the Courier News, Sunday, June 4, 2006

Aging schools pressed into action in Abbott districts

By GEOFF MULVIHILL
The Associated Press

CAMDEN -- By almost any measure, the Broadway School has outlived its usefulness.

Its 178 students, from pre-kindergarten to second grade, have recess on a chuck of blacktop instead of a playground. The school's biggest room is a basement that is used for meetings, a gymnasium and a cafeteria. Faculty members share offices in a room that doubles as a kitchen. Teachers have trouble finding electrical outlets for computers.

The school, in the heart of New Jersey's poorest city, opened in 1887 and is so old and damaged that school officials wanted to close it 15 years ago. But the school is still open, in large part because of an ineffective and mismanaged state program to build new schools in poor neighborhoods, officials say.

In a situation common in many of the state's needy communities, the students and teachers have to make do in a building that, while big on charm (the ceilings are high and decorative, for instance, and the attic is full of 19th century memorabilia), was not designed for modern education.

"It's hard to find the sockets you need" for computers, second-grade teacher Dawn Ramirez said. "These things they didn't think about 120 years ago."

In a series of rulings stemming from the 25-year-old Abbott v. Burke lawsuit, the state Supreme Court ruled that New Jersey must do more for schools in 31 poor districts. But a state agency charged with overseeing construction of new schools in those areas has been fraught with problems.

Until the agency is fixed, Gov. Jon S. Corzine has frozen the agency's money, leaving schools such as Broadway in limbo.

In 2000, the Legislature earmarked $6 billion to start the construction. Two years later, the state set up a new agency, the Schools Construction Corp., to oversee the gargantuan task.

But the agency did not made things smoother.

Some of the poor districts were ill-equipped to build schools, land was expensive and often contaminated, and construction costs were rising far faster than expected. On top of that, the agency itself was wasteful and mismanaged, a government report found last year.

Because of all the problems, the agency so far has built or done major renovations to only 57 schools in the poor districts. Another 118 projects are under construction or have money committed to them from the initial $6 billion.

With the money running out, the construction agency last year put on hold about 350 more projects that had previously gained Department of Education approval. Agency officials now say schools that were chosen to continue were ones that could be built the fastest -- not necessarily the schools that were needed the most.

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