School Daze

Since 1994 I have worked at a school that somehow missed most of the wear and tear of other schools of its vintage. (1965) In many ways this was the result of teachers who worked their entire careers at that school and were solidly invested in it.  The school had a new stage with curtains a few years back.  Old carpets that had come unstuck from the cement were replaced and all of the carpets were cleaned every summer. The teacher’s lounge was repainted by a teacher and blinds installed. The classrooms were spacious and well cared for with windows on one side.

We had a beautiful library filled with books of all kinds enabling kids to read, research, and learn how to use a library. Primary students had story time on the rug there.  Upper grade students could find books supporting their interests in science, history, biography, or fiction. Frankly, it was one of the gems of our school supported by many teachers, librarians, and parents over the years.

The school also boasted a wonderful computer lab with a computer for every child and internet access for all. Students learned to keyboard, do research and create graphic presentations there. They learned about the power and dangers of the internet while writing blogs and doing research. Lessons in English, early reading and mathematics were also available. Here was a place where real life skills were taught every week. Teachers decided to make keyboarding important and many students left our school with skills far beyond those of their teachers, ready to write and publish reports with graphics of every kind. The faculty fought to retain our computer aide who kept the lab clean and the machines running. We didn’t always have the most up-to-date equipment being a small school with little federal monies but what we had was used daily and repaired when broken.

When a “modernization” bond was passed our school packed up and moved to another site. Although a decade newer than ours it looks much the worse for the wear. Regular rooms have but one small window in the door and most of the campus is crowded with aging portables rusting and crumbling from the outside in. Of course all portables lack sinks contributing to the squalid and temporary feel of them. The library there is organized according to an outside reading program and bears no likeness to a real library, the kind students will encounter later in their academic careers.  The computer lab too is small with too few computers for our now large classes. Clashes with the “new” school’s computer aide over curriculum have been largely resolved sometimes by using the lab when our aide is there.

So we’ve all made adjustments. Students bring commercial wipes for their hands, water bottles, and paper towels. Many teaching materials remain in boxes for lack of storage. In my class good students must give up their recess in order to go to the library. The rest simply don’t go, there is no time in the library schedule for my class to go. So no lessons on how to use a library and no books for them to borrow. Sad.

The modernization going on at our school consists of making changes to conform with the Americans with Disabilities Act such as flattening the thresholds to classrooms, removing cabinets under sinks and reducing the teacher’s restroom to just one handicapped stall. Perhaps a new heating system? No one really knows or if they do it’s a state secret. It does seem odd to me that at one school cabinets are being removed for wheelchair access under the sinks while at the other, sinks don’t even exist in classrooms.

But now the other shoe has finally dropped. Our lovely school will be used to house other schools due to be modernized and we will combine with our current site to form one large school. Granted, having to move all our materials once again would be burdensome but at the end we would be back in our nice neighborhood able to take advantage of the amenities like sinks, a fully stocked library we helped create, and a working computer lab for which we also lobbied. The educational environment we created along with our community is gone. We can’t recreate it at a site that’s never been ours.

Oh, and yes the teachers are great at our “new” school and working with them is terrific but teachers spend the vast majority of every day in their classroom with children or working there alone after school. And just because working in a decrepit portable with no sink and inadequate storage may be the norm in California that doesn’t mean teachers have to like it.

It’s a damned shame.