Water leaks, asbestos and sinus infections: North High teachers give warts-and-all tour

The two 1962 graduates of Akron's North High School started their tour of their alma mater on Saturday reminiscing about their senior year lockers and a science experiment gone wrong that resulted in a small fire.

They ended it appalled at the conditions that today's 830 North High students must endure just to learn.

"This is a disaster," Jack Harpool, who walked the building with his friend Fred Ziegler, told Akron Public Schools interim Superintendent Mary Outley after their tour. "I'm ashamed to say this is my former school."

The men, who attended the school's "Rally to Rebuild," saw holes in the floor due to water damage and cracked tiles patched with duct tape. They saw paint peeling off walls, ceiling tiles that were stained or fell out and were never replaced, and felt the temperature shift drastically from one classroom to the next. They smelled the must and heard how you can't put nails in the walls because of the asbestos.

North teachers and staff came into work on their weekend to give tours of the deteriorating 93-year-old building to showcase the need to make replacing North a top priority in the district's long-term facilities plan that is still up for debate.

The school board has reviewed plans to rebuild North at a cost of $80 million. But in the latest version of the plan, replacement hinges on the passage of a permanent improvement levy that would almost certainly be in addition to an operating levy. In that version of the plan, it would also come after the building of a new school in Kenmore to house Pfeiffer Elementary and the Miller South School of the Visual and Performing Arts. Even if the board moved the funding available for the Kenmore project to a replacement building for North, the district would still have to take on significant debt.

North is Akron's only high school not to have been replaced

North was the only neighborhood high school not to have been replaced with a new building through the city and the district's joint 15-year effort that built more than 30 new community learning centers. It is also the only high school in a cluster of schools that has shown growth in enrollment over the last five years.

More than 100 North students also came to school on their Saturday, playing sports on the front lawn because the track and field behind their school is a mess, and greeting those who came for a tour of the building, which still has signs indicating its designation as a nuclear fallout shelter.

"I hope they saw every square inch of this building," sophomore Dev Bhujel said. He spoke to the school board at a meeting earlier this month to persuade the board to replace his school, not for his sake but for the students who will come after him.

His classmate and track teammate Tapash Bhattarai said he once toured Firestone Community Learning Center and noted, "I didn't know high schools could be that beautiful."

Bhujel said his first class of the morning is always freezing. His second class is so hot he sometimes is lightheaded. Some of the hallways are so narrow that it's hard to get to class on time during a rush, and the bathrooms are few and far between and often don't work.

Teachers told guests, including several city and school district leaders, about the lengths they have to go through just to teach a class. Extension cords run across rooms because a classroom only has two outlets. Desks had to be removed because they sat under open leaks. One teacher joked that some classrooms have "water features."

Georgia Flores, a 28-year teacher at North, told the superintendent about how a maintenance worker opened up her classroom's radiator and found decades of dust and dirt and remarked he was surprised she didn't have sinus or breathing issues. He didn't know she'd been on antibiotics for months because of sinus infections.

"We try to do our best, but it's not right," Flores said.

Sound travels through the walls of the buildings through the vent system. One student, Flores said, jokingly spoke into the vents to ask a teacher upstairs to bring her a pencil. He showed up two minutes later, pencil in hand.

What Akron Children's Hospital is doing to help

Akron Children's Hospital, a partner in the school's College and Career Academies, paid to have a room renovated into a boardroom to use for workplace-like experiences. The ceiling started leaking three years ago from the air conditioning, one teacher told tour groups, and the room is still not usable. Tarps hang draped from the ceiling to catch the leaking water.

Principal Kathryn Rodocker, who is finishing her first year at North, said the maintenance team members do their best, but there's only so much they can do. Her time is often spent dealing with facilities-related issues, which gives her less time for students and teachers.

"Sometimes it's a large portion of my day," she said. "Especially if there was rain."

The issues at North High are no secret to district and board officials, including board President Derrick Hall, a 1994 North graduate.

Hall brought his 4-year-old daughter, Lillian Coleman, to the school Saturday to show her where her dad went to school.

"She likes all the stairs," he said.

He's long known of all the issues, he said, although he noticed even more ceiling tiles out of place than on his last visit.

But the district doesn't have $80 million to do the replacement project by itself, he said. The way to get it done, he said, would be a joint project with the city.

"We can't afford it on our own," he said.

What Akron presumptive Mayor-elect Shammas Malik said about North

The city's presumptive Mayor-elect Shammas Malik also toured the school Saturday, and said he was interested in the city having a role in replacing the building.

"We have to be part of those conversations," Malik said, noting it was a "particularly urgent priority."

"We're going to have to find a solution," he said.

Ward 2 Councilman Phil Lombardo, whose ward includes the North Hill neighborhood, said after his tour he was "on the hunt for someone with an extra $80 million."

Outley, in talking with the two 1962 graduates, said she would debrief with the board following the event. Outley is the former executive director of elementary education for the district, but said since being appointed interim superintendent in February, she has toured North High a handful of times.

She encouraged Ziegler and Harpool, who said they planned to attend the board meeting Monday night to speak up for North, to listen to the district's presentation about its five-year financial forecast.

A preview of that forecast at a committee meeting last week showed a projected $6 million deficit for next school year, growing to a deficit of $37 million the year after that.

"That plays a major role in what we're able to do," Outley said.

Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: North High teachers, students show community they need a new building