School Vent. LONG!
Ximena M
member
So I have worked at the same school for the past 11 years. This school serves some of the poorest and most severely disabled students in the district. During that time the school has been falling down around our ears. We have had half a$$ construction projects going on for the past 6 or more years. Even a piece of playground equipment went unrepaired for three years.
The building(s) are so bad that most experts feel that it would be best to knock it down and start over. So a few years ago the city passed a school bond with a majority of money going to rebuild our school from the ground up. The other schools that benefited from that bond are in more middle class neighborhoods and have remolded beautifully. Three years after the plans were made and two years after other schools have been remodeled we are thrown another curve ball. The new board member for our area does not want to go along with the plans because a very small group of people in the community don?t like the changes. She has requested that the school look at moving to another location which would shorten the building process and eliminate the other concerns.
Here?s the rub! We found out today that the proposed site is a former landfill! This is bring me to tears. I asked one of my 13 year old step daughters how she would feel if she found out that her school was built on a landfill. This is her answer, ?I would feel really bad, because a landfill is where they put trash. It would be like saying that the kids are trash and that the education was trash.? That is pretty deep from a 13 year old. I have to say demographically the girls are the exact opposite of a majority of the students at my school. They are middleclass, white and gifted.
Re: School Vent. LONG!
I understand your frustrations about everything relating to the lack of competence in keeping your building safe. I grew up in one of the richest counties, but went to one of the 'poorest' schools. While the others were being remodeled or rebuilt, mine was left with crumbling bleachers, disgusting orange carpet in the classrooms (from the 60's? when was orange carpet in?), and many portables for the overcrowding.
I don't think building on a landfill would be terrible, though. Once landfills are done being used and then covered with sod, they don't look (or smell) like trash.
I'm a special education teacher. I feel that there is a big difference from a prestigious college that people pay about $140,000 to recieve a 4 year degree from, than putting a school full of our city's most vulnerable children. On top of that one of the reasons that staff is suspect about the "safety" of the location is that one of the buildings had "undetectable" levels mold in it, despite the fact that teachers could see it. Teachers got very ill and the rooms were completely "cleaned" supposedly to EPS standards. The building was once again cleared by mold experts. One teacher got so sick that she had to file for workman's comp, because she could not work for the rest of the year. Three other teachers got additional sick days added to their year because they used up so many and had no history of being sick regularly. That was in a building that only had six classrooms. Because of the impending rebuild portables were brought in early and teachers were allowed to move in.
The shortened building time and the fight that the local community (only a very small handful) have given us was the justification that was given to us for moving the site. I was originally very much for the move. They left out the fact that the new building site was a landfill during the meeting that they proposed the move, Infact, the way we learned about it was through the locals that have had family here for literally centuries. The people that are complaining about ONE building being torn down are recent residents of the area.
BTW, not only am I a teacher in this community I am a resident. My grandfather taught at the same school for four years, starting in 1974. My grandmother told me that even then the school was a mess and my grandfather would come home and tell her how bad the conditions were.
Would you want your child to go to school on a landfill? The landfill was active during the time when people were using asbestos and lead paint. Not to mention that the locals are giving accounts of huge mountains of trash that was not removed just bulldozed over. The long term structural implications are not good.
But, the biggest arguement is basically what my step daughter said about a landfill is where trash belongs. Therefore the implication is that the children are trash and the education is trash. WOW!