ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 26, 1995 TAG: 9512270023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
NOTE: Lede
Around the country, the nation's schoolchildren are being jammed into overcrowded classrooms 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 reports by educators and government agencies, is a need for record spending to renovate old schools and build new ones at a time when voters are increasingly leery of public expenditures and skeptical about the public schools.
In three reports this year, the General Accounting Office cited $112 billion in pressing construction needs in the nation's existing schools and found that states last year spent less than $3.5 billion on addressing them. Total spending, the vast majority from local sources, on building schools and repairing old ones last year 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.
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.
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 are not allowed to carry backpacks because there is no room in the halls and 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 said. ``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.
``The need is everywhere,'' said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council for Great City Schools, which represents the 50 largest school districts.
``The problems are real, and they're obvious,'' Casserly said. ``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 mean less need for conventional classrooms.
Similarly, teacher salaries and new curriculums often compete for funding with the needs 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 buildings not conducive to learning or suitable for new technologies.
``There's a crisis of confidence in the schools that's often exacerbated by the buildings themselves,'' Casserly said. ``People drive by and immediately think, at least subliminally, `What good can be going on in a building that looks so bad?'''
And while some experts say the links between the physical condition of schools and student achievement are not clear, what is clear is that many students go to schools that no corporation or government agency catering to adults would stand for. In fact, the current budget for the Department of Education itself includes $20 million to renovate department headquarters while Congress eliminated the $100 million for work at the more than 80,000 public schools around the country.
``I'm against the prison building we're doing, but the truth is the prisons are in far better shape than the places where many of our children go to school,'' said Mae Gamble, a retired education professor at Hunter College who heads the Accelerated Schools Project in New York City, which works to enhance achievement in city schools.
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