Here we go again. We need a new school because the roof leaks. A European told me that in America you build houses from sticks and paper, but when our paper houses need repair we fix them: new roofs, new windows, new bathrooms, new kitchens. Most of us cannot afford to build a new house in the back yard and tear down the old one, but that is what we do with schools around here.
I finished high school in tax crazy NY state. That high school was built in the late 1950s.
It and the neighboring middle school have been repaired and updated several times but somehow they have managed to educate students without tearing them down. Why is that community able to save the money and hold on to its old schools? Here, it is sort of like a spoiled child that has to get something new all the time, but it’s only $73, blah, blah, blah.
Our school administrators, rather than ask for money to fix the old schools, let them deteriorate to the point where concerned parents can easily be convinced that nothing but new schools will do. The new school proponents are always blaming those old California style school buildings from the 1950s and 60s. I guess the people who built those schools didn’t know in which state they were living.
One way to get the school building ball rolling is to put buckets to catch leaky roof water all over the old school so the parents get the message and demand a new building. The parents then get to town meeting in numbers and vote for every school spending article. Often these same parents move out of town when their children finish high school because, “I don’t want to pay those ridiculous property taxes.”
Frank Breen
Philip Farm Road