Children attending New Jersey's urban public schools – mostly poor, Black and Latino – filed legal action in April asking the NJ Supreme Court to order State officials and the Legislature to provide constitutionally-required funding to restart numerous stalled construction projects and address emergency repairs threatening their health and safety.

The school children – plaintiffs in the landmark Abbott v. Burke education equity case – are requesting the Court set a deadline of June 30th for action to approve the construction funds. The request follows the Legislature’s failure to act on a request by the Schools Construction Corporation for $3.25 billion in new funding to restart numerous, already approved building projects in urban or "Abbott" school districts, and its failure to take any action in response to the Court's December 2005 order recognizing 'significant deficiencies' in Abbott facilities that are 'likely to worsen at a severe cost to the state's most disadvantaged school children.'

As a result of that inaction, more school construction projects were put on hold late in April due to funding shortages at the School Construction Corporation. Instead of the 59 projects identified last year to be completed with remaining funds from the $6 billion originally approved for urban districts, only 32 schools will be built or renovated.

Since it began, the school construction program has completed 599 urban school projects and aided 1,425 schools in suburban communities through its grant program. But it was always clear that additional funding would be required. When the original funding was approved, it was well known that the $6 billion for urban districts would not fund the full amount for construction needed. Although problems at the School Construction Corporation, which have since been addressed, did not help matters, they are not the primary reason that many projects have stalled and hundreds more have not been started. The main problem at this point is insufficient funding.

Under the Abbott rulings, public school students are constitutionally entitled to attend school in facilities that are safe, not overcrowded and educationally adequate. In 1998 (Abbott V), 2000 (Abbott VII) and 2005 (Abbott XIV), the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the State’s responsibility to fully fund all of the facilities improvements in the state’s low wealth, high poverty urban districts to address decades of disrepair and neglect.

This ruling did not provide the state with contingencies for tough budget years or generalized concerns about school districts and their financial practices. The Court reiterated that our children have the right to safe and adequate school facilities.

As detailed in the ELC’s court filing, conditions in many Abbott district schools are becoming increasingly dire, and land and construction costs for the stalled projects are rapidly escalating. Inadequate funding for health and safety repairs has become a crisis, as Abbott districts are caught in a "catch-22" between the SCC and NJ Department of Education. The NJDOE prohibits Abbott districts from using operating funds for building repairs, even for emergencies, instead directing districts to the funding-depleted SCC.

"We file with the Supreme Court today as a last resort, out of frustration with the continuing lack of action in Trenton to provide the funding necessary to restart long overdue and urgently needed building projects," said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and Counsel to the school children in the Abbott case.

"We hope this action prompts Governor Jon Corzine, Senate President Richard Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts to take immediate steps to secure needed school construction funds. We’re ready to work with them, and with education, advocacy, labor and business groups, to get legislation enacted quickly," Mr. Sciarra said.

For more information contact:
Lindy Wilson, Building Our Children’s Future lindy789@optonline.net.

Prepared: May 8, 2007