Camden's 1875 school shows construction need

At Camden's Richard Fetters school building, built while Ulysses S. Grant was president and before Thomas A. Edison invented the incandescent lightbulb, children of the Lanning Square community have made do in classrooms tiny by today's standards.

The layout is warren-like. Students and teachers walk through one classroom to get to another. In hot weather, the rooms are stifling. In 2007, the cold made pipes burst. The year before, severe weather and leaky pipes caused major damage to the gym floor. Basement flooding has ruined supplies.

As bad as that is, there is the reason the building is now the Lanning Square School at Fetters.

Six years ago, the original Lanning Square School was discovered to be in danger of collapse and condemned. Its seventh and eighth graders were sent to Pyne Poynt Middle School, and students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade were divided between the Fetters building and the Broadway School, another 19th-century building.

But yesterday, there was hope inside Fetters. The 1875 building was one of four visited by Gov. Corzine on the day he signed legislation authorizing $3.9 billion for school construction.

One of them: a new $42.4 million Lanning Square School, to be started in August 2010.

"For six years we've been in this holding pattern and thinking, 'We're going to be the next school,' " only to be disappointed, said Katrina McCombs, acting principal at Lanning at Fetters and Lanning at Broadway. "This news is inspiring for us because it seems like we're finally going to get our school."

In 1998, New Jersey's Supreme Court ordered the state to upgrade schools in 31 low-income, mostly urban districts, including Camden. But $8 billion allocated for the work ran out, in part, due to waste and possible fraud.

Speaking in Fetters' auditorium/gym, Corzine promised accountability in the building projects and vowed to give the children and faculty at Fetters their new school.

"We need to make sure that the Lanning Square School is built, and it will be," Corzine told the crowd. Later, he said it was "inconceivable" that the state housed schools in buildings dating to the 1800s.

A school in Newark, where Corzine signed the legislation, was built in 1848, said a spokesman with the state Schools Development Authority.

The old buildings are problematic in many ways. Installing modern technology is difficult and expensive, Camden school spokesman Bart Leff said. The median age of Camden's schools is 80 years, he said.

McCombs said that the district had been able to bring technology into her school, but that there had been other problems. Siblings have been split between the two buildings, causing complications for parents.

In addition, the Fetters building is outside the Lanning Square neighborhood. While the school has devoted parents, many of her families lack access to transportation, McCombs said.

"Parental involvement, which is at the cornerstone of good education, is difficult," she said.

The new legislation includes money for 26 school projects, along with 27 deferred last year because of a funding shortfall. It provides $2.9 billion for construction and renovation of schools in the historically poor areas once known as Abbott districts. An additional $1 million is intended for projects in other districts.

Locally, in addition to the Lanning Square school, there is funding for a $94 million renovation of Camden High School and nearly $34 million in improvements at Pyne Poynt.

Gloucester City is in line for a $53.5 million middle school.

Burlington City is slated to get a $9 million early-childhood center. Pemberton Township is getting two early-childhood centers projected to cost $73 million. All four districts were Abbott districts.