A
roadblock in quest for new schools: The
people
Residents
challenge efforts to buy land
Sunday, July 04, 2004 • BY JOHN MOONEY •
Star-Ledger Staff
The two-acre block in
Jersey City is centrally located, relatively flat and, on
paper at least, seemed a good spot to build a
preschool.
But along Kennedy
Boulevard in the city's Heights section, the block of homes
and small businesses is also Joyce Jaworowski's
neighborhood, and the 42-year-old artist-turned-organizer
has given state and local officials a lesson that
neighborhoods are more than just what's on
paper.
From the day she received
a letter in February telling her the state wanted to survey
much of the block where she grew up and still lives as a
site for a school, Jaworowski marshaled neighbors and
politicians to fight it. And it looks like they may have
won.
"It was never about the
need for the schools, but how they selected the site," she
said. "I wouldn't have had the same problem if they said
they had looked everywhere else. But when you are talking
about taking people's homes and jobs, it has to be the very
last option."
The state will spend
hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase land in its $6
billion program to build better schools for its neediest
cities, but it already has found emotional ties to many
properties are not so easy to write off with a
check.
"This the rough side of
building new schools," Charles Epps, Jersey City's school
superintendent, said after a particularly testy neighborhood
meeting last week.
So far, the state agency
in charge of the massive construction program ordered by the
state Supreme Court's Abbott vs. Burke rulings has purchased
or taken more than 100 properties, half of them
homes.
In total, more than 500
new and renovated schools are planned in 30 Abbott
districts, and 700 properties are being considered for
purchase in projects under way.
The state has spent more
than $130 million on the properties, including demolition
and other site expenses. Commercial properties are the vast
bulk of that cost, but residential properties on average
have cost $200,000.
A two-family house making
way for a middle school in Garfield cost the state $459,000.
Long Branch purchased nine residential houses for its new
middle and high school, averaging almost
$290,000.
But with many of those
purchases come life stories and years of bonds, from a
grandmother whose house is one of five getting swept up in
expansion of an Orange elementary school, to the dozens of
homes to be taken for an elementary school in
Camden.
Those emotions were hot at
a meeting in a Jersey City school last week that Jaworowski
helped organize. A graphic artist by trade, Jaworowski has
been devoted to the cause for much of the past two months,
seeking to save the house where she was raised, the sixth of
eight children, and still lives with her
parents.
She rallied neighbors,
petitioned the state for public records, and even spoke to
another Jersey City neighborhood last week.
"If we can help others so
they don't have to go through the same anguish and be
better-informed, that's definitely one of our goals," she
said.
For her own neighborhood,
about 100 people filled the elementary school's gymnasium
for Monday's meeting, poking questions and sometimes
haranguing the handful of state and local school officials
who attended.
They included the owners
of the Hudson Farmers Market, who 11 years ago saw their new
property in Bayonne taken from under them to also make room
for a school. The owner of a garment business on the corner
also pleaded for the state and district to look elsewhere,
as some of her 300 workers stood behind her.
But the most wrenching
stories came from homeowners, several of them elderly and in
their modest homes for decades.
Elmo Posio has lived 58
years in his light-green two-story house, where a cherry
tree seedling he once planted now stands more than 30 feet
tall.
"I thought at the time it
was an apple tree and figured it would be nice in the back
of the yard," Posio said last week, as he stood in the
enclosed yard where he tends a few small flower beds. "We
didn't have all these fences back then."
His wife died five years
ago and the 93-year-old World War II veteran said when he
first received word that the state wanted to survey his
property, he was resigned there wasn't much he could do. But
as neighbors banded together, he grew defiant.
"I'm not ready to move,"
he said, one hand on the American flag he displays from his
front porch. "Nothing is going to make me move."
During the Heights
community meeting, state and local officials were apologetic
for the way the process had started but stressed this
property was only under review, with no final decisions yet
made.
A couple of days later,
they hedged further, saying other properties were also being
considered. By Friday, the Heights property appeared
virtually off the table. It is not when the final decision
will be made.
"We are not here to jam
sites down a community's throat," said George Strachan,
spokesman for the School Construction Corp., the agency
created to oversee construction.
But he and others said
their options are limited in many cities, and there will
inevitably be more homes and businesses taken. Often,
homeowners jump at the money offered, they said.
Still, both sides agreed
the process needs improvement in informing the community
before the letters arrive.
The Education Law Center
in Newark, which has led the Abbott litigation on behalf of
the districts' schoolchildren, has recommended public
hearings and citizen advisory committees be required as
districts develop long-term building plans.
"It is such an incredible
dilemma," said Joan Ponessa, the law center's research
director. "Districts are having serious, serious problem
finding sites ... and if you are going to get schools, you
will need other people's properties. But that can be very
painful."
John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at
jmooney@star ledger.com, or (973) 392-1548.
Copyright 2004 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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