Around the country, the nation’s schoolchildren are being jammed into overcrowded classrooms schools and schools that are falling apart. Often, they are trying to use new technology in old buildings not equipped to handle it.
The result, according to a number of reports by educators and government agencies, is a need for record spending to renovate old schols and build new ones at a time when voters are increasingly leery of any public expenditures and particularly skeptical about the public schools.
In three reports, the most recent released in November, the General Accounting Office cited $112 billion in pressing construction needs in the nation’s existing schools and found that states in 1994 spent less than $3.5 billion on addressing them.
Total spending, the vast majority from local sources, on building new schools and repairing old ones in 1994 came to $10.6 billion, a $100 million decline from the previous year despite rising needs.
The problem is compounded by demographic factors, primarily the entry of the children of Baby Boomers into the school-age population, which has brought record numbers of students into the nation’s schools. In such areas as the southern parts of Florida, Texas and California, increases in immigration also are putting enormous new pressures on schools.
Nationwide, the number of elementary and secondary students next year is expected to surpass the 1971 peak of 51 million, and is projected to grow to 56 million in 2004, from 47 million in 1991.
A glance at some school districts around the country illustrates the scope of the problem. Century-old school buildings are crumbling in New York City, while schools in New Orleans are being eaten away by termites. A ceiling in a Montgomery County, Ala., school collapsed 40 minutes after children left for the day.
In Chicago, there is insufficient electric power and outlets for computers, which sit, unused, in their packing boxes. And in suburban Philadelphia, some schools are so crowded that students aren’t allowed to carry backpacks because there is no room in the halls. Lunch starts at 9:22 a.m. so all students get a chance to eat.
“The question is, are we providing the physical environment for education our children need as they go into the next century?” said Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.). “The answer is a resounding no.”
“Everyone runs on an education platform,” she added. “We have education presidents and education governors and education dog catchers, but the dollars never match the rhetoric.”
While the responsibility for maintaining and building schools has been borne up to now almost entirely by local communities through school taxes and bond issues, there is growing recognition that local money will be insufficient for all the needs.
Whether more state or federal dollars are likely, given the prevailing anti-tax, anti-spending currents, is another question. Some $100 million appropriated by Congress for upgrading school buildings in the previous session of Congress was eliminated in budget cuts this year, and Senator Moseley-Braun, the main proponent of the spending in the Senate, concedes chances of getting similar spending through the current Congress are almost nil.
“The need is everywhere,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council for Great City Schools, which represents the 50 largest school districts in the country. East Coast cities with aging schools often have enormous repair and renovation needs, he said, while districts in the West and Southwest that are seeing enormous enrollment gains face huge costs for new construction.
“The problems are real and they’re obvious,” Casserly added. “And so far no one has stepped forward to say they’re willing to foot the bill.”
The problems are complicated by the myriad pressures and currents buffeting school districts. Calls for educational innovation are adding pressures for newer, more flexible, more technologically up-to-date school buildings. But some experts say the video and computer technologies available outside school buildings could in the future mean less need for conventional classrooms.
Similarly, the demands for improved achievement in schools are creating momentum for increased spending on teacher salaries or new curriculums. Those priorities often compete with the need for physical maintenance.
And doubts about the quality of education in some cases are creating self-fulfilling prophecies in which taxpayers demand improvements in test scores before wanting to invest in new buildings, while expecting children to learn in physical plants not conducive to learning or suitable for new technologies.
Still, Jeff Schneider, a senior policy analyst with the National Education Association concedes there is little research that ties student achievement directly to the condition of school buildings. Some skeptics point to the success of parochial schools in old shabby surroundings as reminders that good education can go on in modest surroundings.
In recent years, many districts have faced agonizing choices over whether to spend money on salaries, technology or building and maintenance with the physical needs, particularly routine maintenance, often coming last. Schneider said that in buildings without critical needs that may be the best course of action.
“You can have a building with so many problems it creates its own bad achievement patterns,” he said. “But merely having a brand new building with lots of brand new stuff does not guarantee high achievement. That has more to do with the decisionmaking around each child and their education.”
But the GAO studies said the urgent needs are widespread, and experiences at buildings like P.S. 109 in New York indicate that work deferred too long becomes ever more expensive over time.
As with most aspects of education, experts say the reliance on local financing for repair and construction only increases the disparity between rich communities and poor ones and between largely minority cities and largely white suburbs.
Casserly said while there was a definite federal role to play in school construction and maintenance, it was the states that had really dropped the ball.
“You have all these governors running around talking about the quality of education,” he said. “They’ve been very paltry with their resources while being very generous with their rhetoric.”
Still, most school officials do not expect much more support from the states or federal government soon. For the immediate future most say they will probably have to strike a balance between what they feel they can afford to do and what they can afford not to.
