Aging out

Students endure schools that are overcrowded and crumbling as the state sits on 48 billion

By: Dustin Racioppi
Trenton Bureau
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... The makeshift gym at Paterson's Public School # 3 is also a makeshift cafeteria. At roughly 600 square feet - the size of a small studio apartment - it's really an empty classroom with basketball hoops mounted on the brick walls and lunch tables folded up along the perimeter.
..... But water damage forced school officials to tape plastic over the gym-slash-cafeteria-slash-classroom door at the end of the school year because it risked exposure to asbestos still in the walls and ceiling of the school built in the late 1800s.
..... At Roberto Clemente school, students of different grades learn and eat in one large open-floor classroom, separated by thin divers sued in offices.
..... And in Newark, space is so limited at Ridge Street School that students learn in "temporary" trailers that have been there for two decades and are falling into disrepair.
..... The school ripped up the wood floor of the basement gym and replaced it with rubber because regular water damage caused buckling.
..... Upstairs, the faculty call the auditorium balcony the "library in the sky" because it's sued for small-group instruction, for teachers to prepare their lessons and sometimes as a place for staff to eat lunch, Principal David DeOliveira said.
..... "Every space, every corner that we can use, we use it," he said.
..... They are just some examples of the old, overcrowded schools students attend in New Jersey's 31-so-called SDA districts - poor, mostly urban areas where the state is legally responsible for ensuring that students get a 'though and efficient" education.
..... That responsibility includes maintaining schools and buildings new ones in those districts so students can learn with basic amenities most others might take for granted: a gym, a cafeteria, functional heating and air conditioning, a classroom of their own.
..... But at a time when the sate has an unprecedented surplus of roughly 48 billion, the Murphy administration has spent a fraction of its build new schools in SDA districts. The surplus is enough to cover the roundly $5 billion needed to replace or renovate 50 "aging schools and about $1.5 billion to resolve overcrowding, said estimates recently disclosed by the Schools Development Authority in court papers.
..... Those estimates "may be on the low end" because "it's remarkable and mind-boggling: what poor conditions schools are in, said Nikki Baker, an organizer with the Healthy School Now coalition who worked in the Paterson school district.
..... "What this indicates is there are thousands of kids who are going to school today in buildings that are not suitable to deliver quality education," said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which is suing the mushy administration over the lack of funding.
..... "So this is a wake-up call that the Legislature and the governor have to really focus on the infrastructure needs of school buildings on a longer-term basis."
..... Senate Nellie Pou, who attended schools in Paterson and now represents, the city, acknowledged that "we need to do more" in DSDA districts.
..... "All of this would not be acceptable in other parts of the state," Pou said. "We would see people marching up to the state capitol every single day."
..... The Supreme Court could force the state's hand instead. The law center has argued to the high court that the Murphy administration has not met its legal duty to students and asked it to intervene, though it's unclear how it would, if it all.
..... The agency has no money for new construction after borrowing $12.5 billion since 2008. It has made clear to political leaders for several years that the needs across districts are urgent, but mushy and lawmakers have not come to an agreement since he took office in 2018 on the next phase of funding.
..... The CEO Murphy named when he took office was charged with leading the agency into the next era by securing billions of dollars more, but a political patronage scandal detailed by the USA TODAY Network led to her resignation, the firing of more than two dozen employees and lawsuits that have cost the agency nearly $1 million in settlements, plus legal fees, with other cases pending.
..... The future of the SDA is no clearer than it was when Murphy took the oath of office. The COVID-19 pandemic in many ways brought the structural deficiencies in SDA districts into sharp relief when students in schools already known to be overcrowded and in disrepair had to socially distance in poorly ventilated spaces.
..... Murphy's office said it's focused on paying for new schools but also avoiding debt that must be repaid by taxpayers. The last round of borrowing costs more than $1 billion a year, a figure that would increase with new bonding.
..... Earlier this year, [2022] for the first time since Murphy took office in 2018, the administration approved new spending through the state budget on school construction in SDA districts: $200 million in Bridgeton, Elizabeth and Garfield.
..... Murphy has also proposed spending another $350 million in the budget that takes effect July 1. [2022] He asked the Legislature to approve another $150 million from a separate fund, but lawmakers have not acted on it for months.
..... If approved, total spending on new schools would represent 9% of the ends identified by the authority in court papers. Murphy's office said eh and lawmakers have had "productive conversations" on schools.
..... "Governor Murphy continues to support the SDA and its mission to develop and improve educational facilities across New Jersey," spokeswoman Alyana Alfaro Post said. "The SDA's efforts help pave the way toward a future in which all New Jersey children, regardless of their ZIP code, enjoy equitable access to education faculties that promote their physical health and optimize their potential."
..... Senator Teresa Ruiz, the Democratic majority leader from Newark, said long-term financing of the SDA is one of her top prioritizes and it would be a "prevalent discussion" during budget negotiations ending later this month. [06/2022]
..... "The budget is flush. We know that's not going to be the case moving forward," said Ruiz, who for years led the Senate Education Committee. "But it's time for us to really have an immediate approach to what the needs are in our SDA districts as far as when it comes to facilities."

Newark schools

,,,,, The need were obvious on a recent tour of schools in her hometown of Newark, the state's largest city.
.... At Lafayette Street School - built in 1848, 12 years before Abraham Lincoln was elected president - the cafeteria isn't large enough to fit the roughly 250 students in each of its four 30-minute lunch periods. So the school orchestrates a shuttle in which each lunch period is broken up into tow groups; one set of students play outside for 15 minutes while another one eats, then they switch. In extreme weather students spend half the lunch period in the auditorium instead of the playground.
..... Hawthorne Avenue Elementary School, built in 1896, is relatively modern compared with Lafayette. But about a third of the building was lost to a fire in the 1990s.
..... The state installed TCUs - Temporary Classroom Units - which are essentially trailers taking up space where the playground would be.
..... Instead, students use a gymnatorium" or compete for space on a patch of pavement behind the school.
..... "They run around, they play tag, they play soccer ... but the soccer game's confined because it can't go into the basketball game. The basketball game;s confined because of kids that are jumping rope or just want to relax. It's just not enough space," Principal Grady James said.
..... "It's a rough situation," he added, "but we make do."
..... Across town at Ridge Street Elementary school - the one with the "library in the sky" - students have been attending class in seven temporary trailers for about 20 years, said Carlos Edmundo, Newark schools' facilities director. Ridge Street is one of a dozen schools in Newark using trailers, according to the district.
.... But the temporary units meant to last 10 years, Edmundo said. The district has already replaced some of the flooring, hes aid, and "now we're getting to the point where we actually have to replace the units."
..... Built in 19121, when Woodrow Wilson was New Jersey governor, Ridge Street School site next to a pristine plot of land with nothing but grass on it.
.... The state spent between $850,000 and $900,000 to demolish 14 homes on that land in 2006, according to SDA documents,w it plans to build a new school there.
..... "Why is it taking so long?" Ruiz said. "I cry, I scream about the issue, and it's because our children deserve way better."
..... Edythe Maier, an authority spokeswomen, said "other district priority schools projects were advanced" instead of building the new Ridge Street school, but the state still owns the property "in the event it is deemed appropriate for project advancement in the future."
.... The other priorities in Newark included three new schools, she said. Since its inception more than a decade ago, the authority has built about 100 new schools statewide.

Paterson schools

.... Dozens of other schools in those cities and others up and down the states - from Garfield to Asbury Park, Phillipsburg to Pleasantvilee - stand as deteriorating remainders of the inequities in a state often lauded by Murphy as having the top-ranked school systems in the country.
..... In Paterson, for example, 16 of its four dozen schools are more than 100 years old, Superintendent Eileen Schafer said. Others, such as John F. Kennedy High School, built in 1965, are more modern but have problems such as broken boilers and inefficient ventilation. JFK is "reaching its useful life," with a crumbling exterior, outdated electrical system and poor heating and colling. Chief Facilities Officer Neil Mapp said.
..... Some classrooms at JFK have window air-conditioning units while others have larger ones that cool much better, Diana Brown's classroom is one of the cooler ones, so students form other classes will go there on hot days, she said.
..... "It's challenging," Brown said. "I try to remember how lucky I am to be with AC."
.... Tanzil Choudhury, an 11th grade student at JFK, said, "we've had many students come to Ms Brown's class just for the AC." And because the air is so dry on hot days, he said, "there's definitely a few times where a friend of mine got a nosebleed because of the heat inside of the school."
..... Where students live within Paterson determines whether they go to a school with just one set of barrooms and a makeshift gym, such as Public School Number 3, or one with cutting-edge technology, such as the Joseph A. Taub School, built by the SDA and opened last year.
..... "A child is only as lucky as where they live," Safer said. "And how unfortunate is that?"

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