Decay in the Midst of Opulence
December 2005
Imagine being huddled in your office, the December winds
barely slowed by porous windows; finger-stiffening cold. A mere twenty feet
away the heat is so intense, sweat beads roll down one’s back within minutes.
Industrial-sized garbage pails brimming with rain water—inside your classroom!
Rust-encrusted lockers across from showers with water temperatures ranging from
artic to sub-arctic. One functioning toilet each, unventilated, for male and
female staff.
If you teach in Garden City , you don’t need to imagine
such scenes, you live them on a daily basis. In the midst of one of the
wealthiest communities in the entire world, across from homes valued in the
millions, sit some of the most run-down, poorly maintained schools imaginable.
While such scenes have become so routine as to hardly merit notice from veteran
staff, visitors are regularly flabbergasted at conditions one can fairly term
atrocious. “How can you teach in such a place?”, is the all-too-common refrain.
How then has it come to this? How can such decay
flourish in the midst of such opulence? Who could be expected to perform at
their professional peak under such circumstances? Why isn’t there a greater
outcry from students, teachers and parents? These are all questions that we as
professions should demand an answer to.
This situation demands attention for many reasons.
First and foremost is the potential hazard such conditions pose to the health
and safety of staff and students. How many of the ailments we suffer can be
attributed to the extreme environmental conditions we regularly experience? In
addition, such poor working environments also have a detrimental impact upon
teacher and student performance. Studies of workplace conditions confirm a
direct correlation between our surroundings and our effectiveness. Such
research also reveals that the impact is as much psychological as it is
physical. After all, what kind of message does it send to require people to
work under such circumstances? As one high school teacher asked rhetorically,
“what parent in this community would accept such conditions at their own
workplace”? The obvious answer (and justifiably so) is very few. And yet, here
we are, day in, day out, surrounded by decrepitude.
All too often, we have become so inured to such
dilapidation that we simply shrug it off. This, however, only ensures that
these conditions will persist. While Dr. Feirsen has recently requested that
building principals evaluate their schools, the magnitude of the problem cries
out for a full-fledged effort to improve our schools. We and our students
deserve nothing less.