In January at least 60 Baltimore public schools went without “sufficient” heat for a week. That is a third of Baltimore’s public schools. As the Baltimore Sun reported last month, the “heating crisis” in Baltimore is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how painfully underfunded and under-resourced our country’s public school systems are. They’ve also turned our public school system into a roller-coaster-style funded business which means that administrators are now supposed to create infrastructure plans that are begun with time limits but do not figure in rising costs to fixes given, leading to millions being allotted and then returned from Baltimore back to the state.
Last year, city schools returned nearly $30 million in state funding for construction projects, including four projects involving heating systems at schools. They included: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary, Garrett Heights Elementary, Roland Park Elementary/Middle School and William S. Baer School.
In state documents, city officials said the need to return the funds was due to “changing market conditions and challenges with lag time between the developed cost estimates and the final allocation of funds.”
Republicans have used these big sums of money “wasted” as proof that the mostly democratic city officials are mismanaging money; but as the former director of Maryland’s Public School Construction Program told the Sun, it’s easy to look at the big number in millions not being used, and forget that there needs to be resources earmarked to municipalities that are tasked with spending tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure strategies.
Lever said he believed Baltimore’s problem with returned funds is due to a combination of old buildings and lack of staff dedicated to school maintenance. Most school systems have a building engineer for each school, he said. Baltimore has one building engineer for every eight schools.
“I think it has to do with understaffing. If you don’t have adequate staffing, you can’t put together accurate scopes and carry out the projects in a timely way. Baltimore city has been understaffed for years,” he said.
And while Baltimore has extreme issues being one of the oldest cities and school infrastructures in America, the fact of the matter is that our school infrastructures across the country—as with our roads and bridges and water ways—are underfunded. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ report card for this past year is a resounding D+.
Every school day, nearly 50 million K-12 students and six million adults occupy close to 100,000 public school buildings on an estimated two million acres of land. The nation continues to underinvest in school facilities, leaving an estimated $38 billion annual gap. As a result, 24% of public school buildings were rated as being in fair or poor condition. While there have been a number of insightful reports in recent years, state and local governments are plagued by a lack of comprehensive data on public school infrastructure as they seek to fund, plan, construct, and maintain quality school facilities. [...]
Recent government statistics show that a significant numbers of public school facilities are not in acceptable condition. Among public schools with permanent buildings – 99% of public schools – almost a quarter (24%) were rated as being in “fair” or “poor” condition. But 31 percent of schools have temporary buildings, either in addition to or instead of permanent buildings, and the number of these schools in “fair” or “poor” condition rises to 45%. In more than 30% of public school facilities, windows, plumbing, and HVAC systems are considered in “fair” or “poor” condition. Outdoor facilities such as parking lots, bus lanes, drop-off areas, fencing, athletic fields, and sidewalks are also problematic. 36% of school parking lots are in “fair” or “poor” condition, as well as 32% of bus lanes, 31% of athletic facilities, and 27% of playgrounds. More than half (53%) of public schools need to make investments for repairs, renovations, and modernizations to be considered to be in “good” condition.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimate that the United States should be spending at least $38 billion more a year on school infrastructure. Unfortunately though, you may have heard we have a growing deficit that just had a $1.5 trillion hole punched into it. From what I’ve read, that deficit is the result of Hillary Clinton sending Muslims to Benghazi to steal America’s guns.
In unrelated news, conservatives believe that spending money on arming teachers and … bulletproof classrooms are going to fix everybody’s problems.
Executive Wood is already the largest supplier of antiballistic lecterns and furniture for the federal government. The founder decided he needed to make something cost effective to protect children in schools, as well.
The 4x6 panels can be rolled in front of a door or window. In an active shooter situation, children can hide behind the panel and bullets cannot penetrate it.
Those panels only cost $2,200 a pop. Hey, what if we just get rid of teachers, stick kids in little bulletproof boxes, and pick them up after work? We will have to figure out how to keep the thing ventilated and maybe we can give them all a small potty to use if needed. Plus, we all know you only need one book, the New Testament, to make you learn good-like. Oh, yeah, also … bulletproof backpacks!
The Florida Christian School website has a list of items available for purchase. These include winter wear, red school logo T-shirts and
ballistic panels.
George Gulla, dean of students and head of school security at Florida Christian School, told CNN the bulletproof panels would add "another level of protection" to students of the pre-K through grade 12 school "in the event of an active shooter."
The Republican Party is a tool of war. The only money they are willing to “spend” is to build up our already overblown war apparatus. The harsh reality is, if Republicans and the NRA gets their way, teachers will begin by having guns, then there will be no teachers, as they will be replaced by drill sergeants teaching kids how to fire weapons to go off to North Korea to ensure American “citizenship.”