Opinion/Scheidler: New school building can renew hope, and bring joy to learning
Leave it to the Providence Teachers Union to help initiate turmoil over the direly needed new school construction that Providence voters have agreed to in two different voting years. Providence voters want to see better buildings for education. Meanwhile, the teachers union creates a stir.
Why deny new buildings to Providence elementary and middle school students and educators? I’ve seen the renovations at Hope High School and Nathan Bishop Middle School, and schools elsewhere, and such improvements not only lift one’s spirits, making one want to come into the building, but also show others care.
I’ve worked in Everett High School, a 2,000-student, five-floor beautiful, airy building newly erected in the center of the city, adjacent to Boston. With all the challenges any urban school system has, the building is a beacon that the low-income city is proud of. Students who have had to walk to school come into the building at 8 a.m. on Saturdays just to shoot hoops. The building is an attractive, appealing safe haven. The new construction must have jarred many, as it replaced a beloved skating rink, and construction would have taken more than a year. But the result was important for education. A teacher told me she loved that her classroom ceiling didn’t leak when it rained, as it did at her former school in a nearby district.
New school building construction always creates turmoil. Students and teachers get shifted around. As assistant superintendent in Hopkinton, Mass., I recall that when the new high school building was under construction, teachers were asked to leave their classroom material in the old school gym over the summer and school custodians would place them in their new classrooms. Many, not trusting that this would work, kept their boxes in their homes over the summer.
Everyone, understandably, complains of the disruption created by leaving an old school and moving to a new one, but normally teachers don't have a union protest over decisions, as reported in the Dec. 14 Providence Journal article "Board has no say on school closings.” The Providence Teachers Union will take any opportunity to ignite protest. The criticism over the new buildings shouldn’t have to be front page news that stirs negativity against the Providence School Department, and ongoing criticism against the education commissioner, who’s only looking for school improvement and is constantly viciously attacked by the union.
I’ve served in school systems where schools were only renovated, as some Providence school building critics call for. I always hear from educators that they would have preferred a new building, which can be erected in the same amount of time and same amount of disruption to the school day. Renovations allow a school to stay in the same physical place, but don’t compete well with the better design of new buildings.
In my time as a Massachusetts districts’ administrator, I saw many new-building constructions in varied districts. Always an adventure while in progress, when completed, they work extremely well. With burgeoning student attendance as families moved in for good schools, a Hopkinton, Mass., elementary principal had her teachers read “Who Moved My Cheese?” and discuss the moving anxiety, as teachers had newly moved from one building to another for new school construction, then back to their earlier school, with two school moves in a couple of years. Over time, educators and parents adjust to the disruption, and with a new building at last, love it. New buildings bring the light in.
Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green, in the Dec. 14 Journal, is quoted, “I have to say that when I go visit other districts that have new construction it breaks my heart,” an apt appraisal for the difference between “have” and “have-not” school systems. The “school closings” move has been termed racist. In my view it’s racist to not have new, inviting school buildings.
I believe Providence Journal articles stressing “school closures” should instead emphasize “new school construction,” direly needed for outdated buildings in disrepair, that will bring joy to students, educators and parents, and, ideally, an environment for better learning.
Kay Scheidler is a former teacher and department chair, Hope High School, and former assistant superintendent in Massachusetts schools.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Opinion/Scheidler: New school buildings can bring joy
