policy issues. she hoped to make progress on root causes in central america. there was certainly progress, but there are some concerns that some of the issue mace have been overshadowed by questions her team knew she would be facing. it s left some perplexed and the vice president s team frustrated. reporter: a diplomatic test turned political quicksand. on her first foreign trip, vice president harris drawing fire from the right and the left as she undertook her mission to address the root causes of migration from central america. do you have any plans to visit the border? at some point you know, we re going to the border. we ve been to the border, so this whole thick ng about the border, we ve been to the border. you haven t been to the boarder. and i haven t been to europe.
fran chess ka chambers. thanks for being with us. we did not need a pandemic to realize what we need. reporter: from inadequate ventilation. the windows. this is the only ventilation that the school actually has. reporter: to antiquated heating. we have a boiler system that runs on oil that is close to 50 years old. reporter: for lighting and asbestos beneath floor surfaces. changing these floors has an environmental impact given what s under these floors. reporter: superintendent roger leon points out a few problems plaguing the school. when was it built? 1888. reporter: leon says 29 of the district s 64 schools are over 100 years old. throughout the years renovations have been made, but the fixes, he says, have been more like band- aids.
systems in their schools. the infrastructure bill has set aside money for internet. about a quarter of u.s. students do not have broadband at home. $45 billion would be used for clean drinking water. while leon wouldn t share the exact figure his district would be allocated, he s already planning how to spend it. we have a 3-inch binder. we have a good sense of what the needs were. how long will that take for it to be implemented? i envision once these dollars are assured, immediate impact. reporter: he sees it as a big step toward a more level playing field. the country needs to understand that children in every school district are important toward changing the reality of their lives.
in 2016, the district, one of new jersey s poorest, asked the state for $311 million to fund more than 150 projects. as of today, only 11 have been app approved. across the country, thousands of superintendents find themselves in similar positions. structural crises that president biden hopes to tackle as part of his nearly $2 trillion infrastructure plan. today, up to 10 million homes in america and 4,000 schools and child care centers have pipes with lead in them. reporter: the american society of civil engineers has given the nation approximately 84,000 public schools a failing grade of d-plus. according to their analysis, 53% of school districts need to upgrade or replace multiple
reporter: now, john and brianna, we should note that interview in newark took place at the end of april, and the biden administration was hoping to see a price tag for an infrastructure bill close to $2 trillion. now that that has been cut down, i reached out to superintendent leon and asked if he was worried about the impact and here s what he said. he said, we are proceeding with our planning as we have built flexibility into our process in anticipation of potentially changing time lines. we do not believe funding delayed is funding denied. clearly this is an issue, john and brianna, not only impacting the newark district but many districts around the country. really interesting. but funding denied is funding denied. officials tell us they are perplexed by vice president kamala harris s somewhat dicey first trip. this just in.