New Jersey lawmakers get an earful on the state of the schools

TRENTON - Lawmakers on Tuesday heard stories of students attending crumbling South Jersey public schools while bureaucratic decisions delay plans to build new ones.

But they received little information about why the Christie administration last month omitted long-promised projects in Camden, Gloucester City, and other needy districts around the state from its list of school construction that will move forward this year.

Members of the Joint Committee on the Public Schools, particularly Sen. Donald Norcross (D., Camden), voiced frustration that the Schools Development Authority (SDA) would not share details about how it prioritized projects.

More information will be available Wednesday, when the spending plan is presented for approval by the SDA board, according to Marc Larkins, the authority's chief executive officer.

The 10 projects that Gov. Christie said would proceed - scaled back from the more than 50 approved under Gov. Jon S. Corzine in 2008 - "is not the end," Larkins cautioned. It was what the administration thought was appropriate to announce at the time, he said.

People want the agency to act quickly, but the state went down that road and didn't do it right, Larkins said. "I'm committed to doing it right this time," he said.

State investigators have found waste and mismanagement in the school construction program, and criticized administrators for rushing projects without thorough planning. Launched in 2002 in response to a court ruling that mandated building improvements in the state's poorest districts, the initial construction agency was replaced in 2007 by the SDA to oversee $3.9 billion in spending.

Christie last month criticized the old system for being wasteful and political, and said school projects would be prioritized for the first time based on need and cost-efficiency.

Districts may re-apply for funding next year, but lawmakers lamented that under the new process it would take years to replace some previously approved schools.

The administration made its decisions without public input, Norcross said.

The lack of an explanation "doesn't play well in terms of transparency and accountability," Assemblywoman Mila Jasey (D., Essex) told Larkins. "We have to go back to our districts and explain to people who have been waiting for a long time why their projects are not moving forward."

In Orange, she said, neighborhoods were destabilized and homes acquired for a school project that is no longer slated for funding. At one school in the district, Jasey said, she saw children wearing coats in an unheated classroom.

In Camden's Lanning Square neighborhood, construction has been delayed on a $42.4 million elementary school that was to be a key piece of a major redevelopment project. The state purchased nearly three dozen properties under the threat of eminent domain to make way for the building.

Students attend two delapidated schools that the project was intended to replace, said Wendy Kunz, director of construction for the Camden district.

Construction funding "would have provided the energizing spark of renewal and hope for the neighborhood, and possibility of jobs for local residents," Kunz told the committee.

The district is sad for Lanning Square, which "has been delivered another blow after so many promises," she said. But it "is saddest for the students, who must continue their education without ever experiencing a 21st-century school."

Neighboring Gloucester City is not receiving funds to replace the Mary Ethel Costello School, which Superintendent Paul Spaventa told the panel had been cited by local fire officials for safety hazards.

Spaventa says he does not blame Larkins for the program's problems, but still wants the state to fund more schools.

"Our school is crumbling around our students. . . . We're sitting in a building that is patently unsafe and would not pass the most rudimentary safety precautions for the general public," he said.