Schools

Making the case for a bond

District 13 outlines building upgrades it says are needed

Posted

Residents of District 13 will go to the polls on Dec. 8 to approve or reject a proposed $32 million bond that would fund repairs and upgrades to all of the district’s buildings — improvements that the district says are long overdue.

“They’re just old,” said Board of Education President Toni Pomerantz of the district’s four schools. “They need to be updated. Some things are no longer in code. The whole board supports this 110 percent.”

The list of proposed improvements is long, with a new cafeteria at the Wheeler Avenue School being the single biggest project. The current cafeteria is in the school’s basement, and students have to file past one another in a narrow stairwell to eat lunch, two grades at a time. The roofs on all four buildings would be redone, which would clear the way for solar panels that would offset heating and cooling costs “completely,” according to Interim Superintendent of Business Alan Groveman.

The Herald toured Wheeler to see a sampling of what school officials said is a good representation of conditions at all of the district’s schools, which reflect decades of use and maintenance work. Sunlight shines through gaps between exterior doors and frames, many of which show signs of rusting metal and rotting wood. The plastic sheeting used in the doors’ windows is scratched and clouded, and some doors fail to latch unless they are shut hard.

In the bathrooms, visitors are greeted by a dank smell that custodian John Rofrano said is impossible to overcome. Water pressure in the sinks varies, as it does in the drinking fountains just outside. Some sinks’ faucets are out of commission entirely — in one bathroom, the only warm water available between three sinks is a meager stream from a single faucet. Groveman said that while school bathrooms might be an afterthought when people consider the quality of their schools, their condition matters beyond their obvious functions.

“Bathroom renovations are just a world above what you think of them in terms of the general impression people get,” Groveman said. “Bathrooms for the kids are so critical — other than the health and sanitation, it just gives them such a different impression of where they are.”

Page 1 / 3