School
builders ask time to 'get act together'
Pending projects on hold at least
6 months, agency tells justices
Tuesday, November 08, 2005 • BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL •
Star-Ledger Staff
New Jersey's troubled Schools
Construction Corp. needs at least six months to "get its
house in order" before it can return to work on hundreds of
school projects that were shelved last summer, a lawyer for
the agency told the state Supreme Court
yesterday.
Attorneys for students in the 31
communities where the SCC is under court order to improve
hundreds of decrepit schools appeared before the Supreme
Court yesterday, seeking an order that would require the
Department of Education to request additional funds from
lawmakers within 15 days.
"There's an immediate need," said David
Sciarra, lead attorney for the students. "We are asking for
some time frame to get it done."
Nancy Kaplen, attorney for the SCC and
the Education Department, said the state will not be in
position to seek or spend any additional funds from
lawmakers until the middle of next year, at the
earliest.
"You need to give the agency a little bit
of time to get its act together," Kaplen said. "They're
moving along, but they have so many balls in the
air."
The hearing was the latest in the
long-running Abbott vs. Burke case over public school
funding in New Jersey's poorest communities. In a landmark
1998 ruling, the court ordered a series of sweeping reforms,
including the repair or renovation of hundreds of school
buildings that were deemed obsolete and
overcrowded.
Since then, the state has exhausted the
first $6 billion lawmakers allocated to the construction
effort.
With that money, Kaplen said, the state
has repaired 350 schools, built 11 schools and started work
on 63 more new school buildings. In July, agency officials
suspended work on about 200 more school projects, citing a
lack of funds.
Sciarra and the Education Law Center, the
nonprofit agency that has pushed the Abbott case, want the
state to calculate the cost of completing those projects in
order to be able to petition the Legislature for additional
funding.
But Kaplen said compiling those estimates
would divert the SCC's staff from the two key tasks of
completing the 63 schools under construction and retooling
the agency's internal operations.
"I think there's a limitation to how much
multi-tasking it can take on," Kaplen said.
Kaplen said it will take at least two
years to finish building the schools currently in the works.
She said the agency likely will be able to identify a new
round of projects it can begin within six months.
The SCC has been reorganizing since
April, when a scathing state inspector general's report
concluded that the agency was vulnerable to waste and abuse
of its funds because it lacked basic financial management
tools.
That report was prompted by a Star-Ledger
analysis that found that cost overruns and costly
professional contracts led the first six schools built by
the SCC to cost, on average, 45 percent more than schools
built by local school districts at the same time.
Since those reports, the SCC has replaced
its top management and rewritten its contracts with
architects and other professionals to save the state
money.
At least three of the court's seven
justices expressed concern that schoolchildren will be
harmed by any continued delay in the SCC's reorganization
and contracting.
"What do you say to the children in
Elizabeth?" Justice Barry T. Albin asked Kaplen, referring
to one of the communities included in the court's
construction order. "'You're going to learn in cramped
quarters; you're going to have lunch in the hallways,' and
all these other details that have been presented to
us?"
The court declined to issue an immediate
opinion after the 45-minute presentations.
Dunstan McNichol covers state government issues. He may
be reached at dmcnichol@starled ger.com or (609) 989-0341.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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