Facilities Gap

One reform issue that has been on mind recently, as the weather turns warm, has been about the facilities where we teach our students. In the spring 2007 issue of Education Magazine, an article appeared discussing the” facilities gap” that exists between urban schools that serve low income students and schools that serve higher income students. For the past two years, I have been focusing on the achievement gap, but this article made me stop and think about my own school and the problems I have experienced because of the fact that the school is in desperate need of basic repairs and modernization.
The article, I suppose, surprised me, because of how well I knew the situations they were describing. For example, teachers and students must deal with drastic temperatures in both the winter and summer, making it difficult to teach as well as to learn as they all freeze or sweat. Also, how many basic repairs are put off or ignored until they become larger, like holes. This I have already experienced in the past, but besides how uncomfortable the school can become, affecting learning, I did not realize that these conditions can affect students’ health permanently. The article made a correlation between the increase of asthma among African American students can be connected to poor conditions in the schools. Asthma is also responsible for numerous absences among students, which again is leading to less quality time in the classroom for actual learning and thus increasing the achievement gap.
The article also demonstrates how poor facilities affect students’ attitudes towards school. The photos featured in the article were taken by students in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area and was meant to capture the perspective of the students who are expected to learn in this environment. The photos of the graffiti covered bathrooms with no stall doors, the flooded basement filled with trash, and broken windows show how students’ resent and accept these conditions. They are normal, but there is no pride felt for these schools. How can you be proud of your school and believe in its ability to teach you if they can’t keep the basement dry? How can students feel cared for if their school cannot even meet their basic needs of having a safe, healthy, and comfortable place to learn? This is a major issue that has to be addressed in order to create a school environment that is conducive to learning.
Some solutions were addressed in the article for dealing with the facilities gap. The national teachers’ union has began to take action in certain areas to help raise money for school improvement and make sure that repair issues are being addressed. However, this movement has a very limited scope as it depends completely on the power of the local union chapter. The facts are that in many urban environments not enough funds are available for school repair in districts that serve low income students. The money is being spent on improving schools in more affluent areas. In most cases, it is actually easier to get funding to build a new school than it is to renovate an old one. In order for real change to happen, staff, students, and parents need to demand that the states and federal government change their funding policies to ensure that all students can attend schools that are healthy, safe, and comfortable places to learn.