There’s a new article now about the situation at JBHS with the school building. Somewhat interesting, but the list from the building committee is far less extensive than it should be. There’s much more wrong with the building than that. The comments on the article are interesting as well, if a bit inane (“my taxes shouldn’t go up! whose fault is this? rawr!”). I added my own comment, which I’ll reproduce here:
Before I start talking about the renovations that really ARE desperately needed at JBHS, I want to cover the topic of teacher salaries, in order to clear the air. Teacher salaries increase over time (as I’m sure each one of your salaries does). Average teacher salary in Tuscarora School District is slightly below average for the state and for Franklin County, although they have (on average) three more years experience than the rest of the teachers in the county. In order to be competetive in the market for good teachers, salaries have to be kept up — otherwise, teachers will quit to move to better-paying districts. On the whole, the average school district in Pennsylvania devotes 69% of their expenditures to paying salaries and benefits for teachers, support staff, and administrators. Salaries are always going to be a major portion of expenditures in just about any business — it’s a fact of life. Blaming the whole situation on the teachers simply increases the tension between teachers and the community, and each needs to work with the other for the benefit of both.
One of the major questions that is often asked about the current situation is why the regular maintenance hasn’t solved the problem. The reality is that even with the best of maintenance, everything wears out eventually. The article pointed out that it is becoming difficult to find parts for the ventilators, and this is true of other things in the school as well. The school building is almost 40 years old, and much of it is simply worn out. While the school budget over the past few decades would pay for maintenance, it would not have been enough to pay for phased upgrading of things like the ventilation system, the pool, the waterlines, etc. Seeing the vicious attacks that are being made against anyone and everyone attached to the School District, one can see now why the School Board would have been hesitant in the past to ask for a tax raise to do the work gradually — instead, all of it now needs done at once, and it’s time to pay the piper for the lower tax rates of yesteryear.
Was all of this bad planning on the school board’s part? That’s up to the voters to decide. What is important now is that something has to be done to repair the school. The situation right now is at a point where things can be fixed. If they are left alone too much longer, something may fail, perhaps even catastrophically. It will be even more expensive to fix then, and hopefully nobody will be hurt.
UPDATE 6/26/07 10.45PM: After much digital debate, I have decided that the REASON I keep avoiding politics is because in general I like to be optimistic about humanity, and I dislike being mugged by reality.