If it was your house, how much would you renovate?
By Mona Gerber Milbrodt, editor, Byrd Notes (Originally published in the June 2007 issue of Byrd Notes)
Remember 10th grade biology? If not, just visit the Glen Rock High School science labs — although modern posters of human genome technology decorate the walls, everything else is just like you left it — literally.
Same equipment, same furniture, same plumbing. Forget “vintage charm,” it’s old, and when the things you’d normally fix in your home — like sinks — start to break down, the only way to get to those pipes “is with a jackhammer,” says GRHS Principal James McCarthy. “It’s built on a 68-year-old slab, same age as the boilers.” And the deterioration continues.
 Now what exactly is on that shelf of smelly chemicals? More photos |
This was what parents and citizens saw and heard on a guided tour of the middle school/high school sponsored by the Board of Education on
May 23, 2007.
The tour was designed to show:
1) why we need to sanction a referendum to fund renovation of the school our children now attend or will attend eventually, and
2) how time has passed this building by.
How did it reach this condition?
Well, the answer is rather like a patchwork of explanations, lack of a tax base and the fact that it was designed in various decades under different state mandates.
Despite a patchwork of improvements — as much as the last referendum (around 1993) would pay for — the issues these days are accommodating the number of class offerings that beef up college applications and diversify experiences and the current use of the building by mandated programs such as special education and ESL (English as a Second Language).
But this is Glen Rock, you might argue, where home renovation is the great American pastime, just second to doting on our children, and where our high school is one of the best in the state, right, and our kids are still getting a great education, aren’t they?
"The academic program is suffering," says George Connelly, the superintendent of schools. “The kids aren’t getting what they should have because of the facility.” Bad space planning, faulty plumbing, limited ventilation and overcrowding are definitely a competitive disadvantage.
Even if the kids haven’t visited high schools in Ramsey, Indian Hills or Fair Lawn and don’t know what they’re missing, what they do know, is that this place is CROWDED, fast approaching 800 students. When I asked a seventh grader (the daughter of a friend), about what she would want if we could improve anything about the building, without hesitation she answered, “more classrooms!”
The crowding situation.
There are 55 acknowledged "inappropriate" spaces (the Board's words, not mine) used for teaching during the day that were never designed for that purpose.
It's a nomadic existence for Glen Rock students. Those taking classes in the auditorium are often displaced by meetings and assemblies. Some of the science overload classes are held in the social studies rooms — no labs...non-working or otherwise.
Here’s just a sampling of current conditions:
 Pardon me, excuse me, oops, coming through, sorry... |
Violin class — We’re up to 25 students in the hallway outside the auditorium, contending with constant disruptions from people with business at the school using the entrance doors.
The congested music room in back of the auditorium is slotted for holding a seam-bursting 35-50 students per class next year.
Students attend Spanish class in a room intended to be a computer lab. They sit backwards and use their laps for textbooks and notebooks, since computers and keyboards occupy the desk space. They also try to concentrate and speak over the dialogue from the other language class — located on the other side of a movable divider.
No storage — for scenery, musical instruments, equipment, photography developer fluid, biology and chemistry class chemicals, art supplies, which leaves a whole lot of unidentified compounds shelved and forgotten...but the mystery fills the air.
No ventilation — particularly in Middle School art rooms.
So you get the picture. What you don’t have, is a clear picture of how much this much-needed renovation is going to cost. That part is coming.
As a community, we will all need to understand what the Board is proposing cost-wise, and what we’ll get for that expenditure. And we’ll have to deal with it, the same way we’d prioritize the must-haves, nice-to-haves and can’t-affords of our own home projects.
 Some suggestions heard in passing, not at meetings:
- charge an extra
dollar for every
ticket sold in the
auditorium and use that
money toward its renovation, - put clubs and volunteers to
work on "fix-up" projects. |
And the next time there’s a meeting, try to come. Not just to listen, but perhaps to make a suggestion or two.
Share your ideas. It’s how we may find lower-cost solutions that enable people to support our community.
The next referendum meeting is on June 18,
at 7 p.m. in the HS Media Center.
Some call it "putting your two cents in," an activity we'll probably be very familiar with (just add a few decimal places), when all is said – and finally DONE.