well some of New Jersey's largest and poorest school districts in the state are in desperate need of construction funding in order to address issues like overcrowding aging buildings and outdated facilities That's according to a new education report that was discussed this week during a Senate budget committee hearing which also said twothirds of the state's highest need districts are over capacity at a time when the administration is looking to trim the SDA's budget That's the school development authority Our education and child welfare writer Hannah Gross is here with me in the studio for more Hannah thanks so much for coming in So very quickly let's just set the stage Why is the SDA um the in charge of this funding and um how much money are they asking for it all dates back to a state supreme court ruling that said these 31 districts the students were not getting the thorough and efficient education required under the state constitution in part because their school facilities were not up to par which was making it difficult for the students to learn So in these districts the state pays for 100% of school construction So how much money do they typically have to work with and what is the Murphy administration proposing um given what we'll get into which is the problems that they need to address the Murphy administration is proposing 350 million from an offbudget source the debt defeasence and prevention fund There's already about $2 billion that the SDA is using to complete some emergency projects but on top of everything that's already funded the SDA estimates they need about six or seven billion dollars to address overcrowded and aging facilities So that's a far cry from from what they're looking at Give us an example of some of the districts that were brought up um in this hearing There was another hearing you had recently covered about just exactly what these districts are up against I mean one of the districts that's top of mind is Newark the state's largest district There were about 2,000 seats overcrowded according to a recent report based on enrollment from the 2324 school year But Senator Ruiz pointed out in the budget hearing that even since the October count of this year enrollment has gone up by about 1500 students So that could be kids moving from other parts of the state Maybe they're coming into Newark from other countries So enrollment is growing even beyond the estimates used in this report So how does the SDA decide which projects get funded first i know Elizabeth was another district mentioned quite a bit It's a combination of factors They look at the square footage per student and if it's meeting state requirements They also look at how many seats are available and the age of facilities But there's other factors like if there's land available where they could construct new schools and in some cities where the land is already basically being used up it can be hard to find places to build new schools Um is the legislature will the legislature look at tapping other funding sources to get the SDA a little bit closer to where they say they need to be it's possible Senator Ruiz an influential lawmaker the Senate majority leader has been pushing for this for bonds to be used to help increase more funding but it's up to the legislature what happens next Yeah that B- word nobody likes that B- word um when it comes to this kind of stuff Okay so talk to me about Elizabeth because per your reporting they have the highest overcrowding Um 11,000 seats they need It's 11,000 seats across all of the SCA districts but about half of them are in Elizabeth So more than 5,000 And the last time I reported on Elizabeth about this time last year they were using 70 trailers They were using a bunch of religious schools that they turned into public school buildings They had to take students or take books out of the libraries to put students in there and have libraries on carts Um so they're getting creative to make sure these students can still get the best education possible So where do they go from here obviously schools are ending this calendar year Um they're looking ahead to the next where likely enrollment could be even higher Um where do they go from here i mean they can ask their lawmakers to fight for more money They can keep trying to come up with creative solutions on their own within their district but it's tough because it's expensive to build new schools Yeah Is there political will from what you gathered during these hearings and during this week's hearing um to to look to find some of that funding it's hard to say with the administration calling it such a tough budget year if they'll be able to squeeze out more money and if it would be enough to even make a dent in this six or seven billion total All right you can read this story from Hannah Gross as well as other coverage on the SDA and overcrowding in schools on our website njspotlightenews.org Hannah thanks so much for coming in Thanks for having me Bri [Music]