By Kathianne Boniello
Borough President Claire Shulman vowed this week to fight for new schools promised to the borough in the current five-year construction budget despite the recently exposed funding crisis that has blossomed into a $2.8 billion deficit.
In June the city Board of Education learned of a $1.5 billion shortfall in the school construction budget that was slated to bring thousands of sorely needed classroom seats into Queens, the borough with the most overcrowded schools in the city. Last week Schools Chancellor Harold Levy announced the deficit was closer to $3 billion, more than twice that originally expected.
The budget gap came to light earlier this year when it was revealed Queens could lose six proposed school projects in School Districts 24 and 30 and two high schools as a way to save money.
Shulman spokesman Dan Andrews said Monday the borough president would not entertain the notion of losing classrooms already pledged to Queens.
“We don’t believe we’re going to lose six schools. We don’t expect that result,” he said. “The borough president has been meeting with the School Construction Authority, the Division of School Facilities to try to find out what happened to the $2.8 billion.”
Andrews said Shulman was among those eagerly awaiting the results of an audit of the $7 billion school construction requested by Queens Board of Ed member Terri Thomson several months ago.
“We’d like to know, too” about what happened to the $2.8 billion, Andrews said.
The deficit had originally been reported at $1.5 billion and landed Levy in hot water with the Board of Education and the City Council. Both groups grilled the chancellor about the reasons for the deficit in separate July hearings.
The city system for building schools requires the Board of Ed to use other city agencies as clients of the board to complete construction projects. Some of those agencies are the School Construction Authority, the Department of Design and Construction and the Division of School Facilities, a sub-agency of the board.
Levy and his staff, including Patricia Zedalis, head of the Division of School Facilities, explained the deficit at a July 18 city council hearing and blamed rising construction costs as well as a bureaucratic system for the cost overruns.
Both Zedalis and Levy said the Board was often forced to estimate the cost of a given construction project without knowing the sites for new schools or the extent of necessary repairs for rehabilitation of existing schools. Once sites were chosen or renovation jobs were fully assessed, they said, it often drove up prices.
But in an Aug. 7 news release announcing the budget gap appeared to be far bigger than originally thought, Levy said he had removed Zedalis as head of the Division of School Facilities.
“It is clear that a change must be made immediately,” he said. “I believe the Division of School Facilities' capital function should now be overseen by the SCA.”
Levy based his announcement of the $2.8 billion shortfall on the information from the School Construction Authority but did not give further details.
The school construction scandal has shaken the strength of the relatively new chancellor, who has been on the job less than two years. Earlier this week Levy announced a shake-up in the Board of Ed’s administration staff and the layoffs of several hundred employees in a bid to save money.
Levy took over the post in May 2000 after then-Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew was removed from the position.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
