hundreds of students in Paterson are starting off the school year being forced to relocate to different buildings after a ceiling collapse in public school 3 earlier this summer forcing the 124 year old building to be shut down over safety concerns that more large pieces of plaster could fall this isn't the first time the school district has been confronted with the consequences of its crumbling infrastructure but its effect on students and their learning is becoming more dire for those at PS3 it means being split up from classmates and in many cases even bust across town senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan has the story I thought I was going to have all three of my children in one school for the first time and now that won't be the case now they're being separated again Stephanie Martinez like other families with kids at Paterson's PS3 always anticipated the first day of classes at their iconic neighborhood elementary school but PS3 closed for pairs last month after a plaster ceiling collapsed in the 124 year old building so the district's divvying up its 300 students directing younger kids a few blocks over to the Dale Avenue School and loading grades three through eight onto buses for a Crosstown trip to Martin Luther King some folks really struggled it's frustrating oh sorry it's bad it's they should have done something about the school years ago others guided kids through a revised routine and hoped for the best one day at a time I came to drop off my two oldest here they're gonna take the bus then I have to drop off my son to the Avenue they're not providing transportation to Dell Ave I'm trying to handle as best as I can unfortunately I have my one kid has to go on the bus and my other one has to go to Dell Avenue so you've got kids going in two different directions correct we decided to split the groups the way we did so that to make sure that especially the schools that are receiving our students that we didn't inconvenience them for being you know good hosts the superintendents trying to prevent overcrowding in a district already dealing with a significant teacher shortage and 17 buildings over a century old as buses crowded over to the curb and kids climbed aboard busy rush hour traffic backed up on Main Street cars haplessly parked in bus pickup zones got towed late comers who missed the bus had to drive their kids but observers gave this transition process a decent grade C plus it will be working better soon as the day come along so it works fine it's only about 10 minutes or 15 minutes a little bit behind schedule first day of school I was crossing my fingers I was racing over here just to see but so far so good went off without a hitch now comes the hard part the district estimates it'll cost two million dollars and take four to five months to fix PS3 which still leaves them with an old substandard building and taking 2 million out of its operating budget would stress already strained resources one school board Commissioners adamant I won't vote for fixing up PS3 because I could I can't put that money into a 124 year old structure I can't see the value throwing good money after bad absolutely so we we need a new building we can't live like this our kids can't continue to subsist in these substandard facilities the district wants funding for new facilities from New Jersey schools Development Authority what we have here is an inadequate facility that is now falling apart at the seams and we cannot look to the local school budget to do this work that the Supreme Court said was the responsibility of the state of New Jersey a new building would take years to construct meanwhile PS3 parents will schlep their kids and cope with the situation it's going to be farther obviously if any emergency situation is going to take me longer to get there but um he's excited so as long he's excited I'm okay as for this new routine it'll get wrenched around again this afternoon and tomorrow when Patterson schools closer early due to the sweltering heat in Paterson I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News [Music]