Plays Well With Others

Failing Schools…

Most of the schools I attended were in bad to decent shape. None of them were new. Most had been standing for at least 30 years and it showed. Water damaged ceiling tiles, broken floor tiles, mismatched lockers—all things that made the schools look run down. Unfortunately, the only way to fix a school is to ask the taxpayers for more money. Public schools don’t make money.

In California, school money comes from a couple of sources—lottery money and taxpayers. Education is the core focus for most schools, so using money to upgrade the buildings is sort of at the end of the list. During my elementary school years, we actually had “extra” empty classrooms, along with a large playground area. The extra classrooms were often used as computer rooms with an adjoining door to the main classroom. These days there are no extra classrooms. In fact, a drive by my former elementary school a few months ago showed that the large playground had been swallowed up by portable classrooms. The places where I used to play, were not places where children learned. The school itself hasn’t changed at all since I attended.

Same with my middle school. It looks the same. In fact, the only school that looks different is my high school. A few years ago they were given a grant specifically for upgrades to the school. They added an elevator, some new computer classrooms and made other aesthetic fixes to the school. It’s still an old school, but I’m sure the fresh coat of paint helped.

Unfortunately public schools don’t charge for their services and don’t make money from the use of their facilities. They just sit there. And to me it’s a huge waste. I’ve always been one to state that rather than a community building new classrooms for adult/evening education or even weekend community classes, they should work it out to use an existing school and use the money they would have used to build from scratch and upgrade the existing school. There’s absolutely no reason an existing school couldn’t be used for evening and weekend classes. And there’s no reason a school should sit dormant for an entire summer. A portion of any money made from weekend or evening classes could be used to upgrade the school facilities.

I just don’t understand it. In my opinion, with the lack of land available, communities are going to have to start thinking of ways to make double or triple use out of the resources they have. For one, they could build a public library near a school, rather than building a library at a school and another for the community. They could also build a community recreation center, complete with sports facilities and a gymnasium near a high school and during school hours it would be used by the school, on evenings and weekends it would be available to the community.

I just think it’s terribly wasteful for a school to have their own computer lab and then for the community to have to spend more for a community computer lab. Making the most of what you’ve already got it how most families live and it should be how our communities deal with their own resources.

I’d be interested in knowing about communities that already do this, so if anyone knows of any let me know and I’ll check them out.

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