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Like our roads and bridges, our school infrastructure could use an upgrade

3 min read

This week, students and parents in the Trinity Area School District in Washington County were able to take in the new Trinity Intermediate School, and the initial reviews were very good.

One parent described it as “absolutely beautiful,” “incredible” and “amazing.” The structure, which has been in the works for the last three years, will have a project classroom on each floor and a full-sized gym that can withstand hurricane-force winds. The new building, which will contain about 600 fourth- and fifth-graders, their teachers and other personnel, is part of expansion and renovation work the district is undertaking that will include new tennis courts and a state-of-the-art athletic complex.

Students, parents and, yes, taxpayers, can be glad about this work. Quality public schools are a boon for communities and make people want to live and work in them and, more often than not, those quality schools also have quality facilities.

There are many districts out there that aren’t as lucky as Trinity, however.

Because school districts have to cover the lion’s share of the costs when it comes to building maintenance and upkeep, that inevitably means that districts in well-heeled communities have top-grade buildings, while districts in less well-off areas have to get by with buildings that are sometimes in fair or poor condition. The average school building in America is now more than 40 years old, and in some cities they are 60 years old or older. In recent years, there have been plenty of news stories about students having to shiver in the winter and sweat in the spring and late summer in school buildings in urban districts where heating or cooling systems are not adequate. But those same issues and more are also present in rural districts where the revenue is just not there to fund new construction or improvements on school buildings.

It would be tempting to say that, well, I went to school in a certain building and I did fine, and so can my children or grandchildren. But studies have shown that children don’t learn as well and teacher morale is lower when a building is dreary or slowly crumbling. How would you feel if you had to report to a building every day that had wobbly desks or cracked windows?

Unfortunately, as Rhode Island U.S. Sen. Jack Reed put it last year, “We’re sending a very strong message to children when we don’t upgrade and modernize school buildings. That message is, it’s not important.”

Studies have shown that when you put all the public school districts in the country together, America is spending $85 billion less than it should on school construction and repair. Also, anyone who has owned a car for a long time can attest that, at a certain point, it costs more to keep an old vehicle on the road than just starting over and getting a new one.

Advocates for upgrading school infrastructure say a federal investment is needed, something that has not happened since the 1930s and the heyday of the New Deal.

And consider this: The American Society of Civil Engineers has given public school infrastructure a grade of D-plus. That’s not something we should be satisfied with.

As Bill Clinton said when he was president, “We cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally falling down.”

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