U.S. Schools Falling Apart, Reports Say Huge Cash Influx Needed, But Budgets Being Cut

Around the country, the nation’s schoolchildren are being jammed into overcrowded classrooms and schools that are falling apart. Often, they are trying to use new technology in old buildings not equipped to handle it.

The result, according to a number of reports by educators and government agencies, is a need for record spending to renovate old schools and build new ones at a time when voters are increasingly leery of any public expenditures.

In three reports, the most recent released last month, the General Accounting Office this year cited $112 billion in pressing construction needs in the nation’s existing schools and found that states last year spent less than $3.5 billion on addressing them.

Total spending, the vast majority from local sources, on building new schools and repairing old ones last year came to $10.6 billion, a $100 million decline from the previous year despite rising needs.

The problem is compounded by demographic factors, primarily the entry of the children of baby boomers into the school-age population, which has brought record numbers of students into the nation’s schools. In such areas as the southern parts of Florida, Texas and California, increases in immigration are also putting enormous new pressures on schools.

Nationwide, the number of elementary and secondary students next year is expected to surpass the 1971 peak of 51 million, and is projected to grow to 56 million in 2004, from 47 million in 1991.

A glance at some school districts around the country illustrates the scope of the problem. Century-old school buildings are crumbling in New York City, while schools in New Orleans are being eaten away by termites. A ceiling in a Montgomery County, Ala., school collapsed 40 minutes after children left for the day.

In Chicago, there is insufficient electric power and outlets for computers, which sit, unused, in their packing boxes.

And in suburban Philadelphia, some schools are so crowded that students are not allowed to carry backpacks because there is no room in the halls and lunch starts at 9:22 a.m. so all students get a chance to eat.

“The question is, are we providing the physical environment for education our children need as they go into the next century?” said Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill. “The answer is a resounding no.”

“Everyone runs on an education platform,” she added. “We have education presidents and education governors and education dogcatchers, but the dollars never match the rhetoric.”

While the responsibility for maintaining and building schools has been borne up to now almost entirely by local communities through school taxes and bond issues, there is growing recognition that local money will be insufficient for all the needs.

Whether more state or federal dollars are likely, given the prevailing anti-tax, anti-spending currents, is another question. Some $100 million appropriated by Congress for upgrading school buildings in the previous session of Congress was eliminated in budget cuts this year, and Moseley-Braun, the main proponent of the spending in the Senate, concedes chances of getting similar spending through the current Congress are almost nil.

“The need is everywhere,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council for Great City Schools, which represents the 50 largest school districts in the country.

East Coast cities with aging schools often have enormous repair and renovation needs, he said, while districts in the West and Southwest that are seeing enormous enrollment gains face huge costs for new construction.

“The problems are real and they’re obvious,” Casserly added. “And so far no one has stepped forward to say they’re willing to foot the bill.”

And while some experts say the links between the physical condition of schools and student achievement are not clear, what is clear is that many students go to schools that no corporation or government agency catering to adults would stand for.

In fact, the current budget for the Department of Education itself includes $20 million to renovate department headquarters while Congress eliminated the $100 million that had been earmarked for work at the more than 80,000 public schools around the country.

“I’m against the prison building we’re doing, but the truth is the prisons are in far better shape than the places where many of our children go to school,” said Mae Gamble, a retired education professor at Hunter College who heads the Acclerated Schools Project in New York City, which works to enhance achievement in various city schools.

According to the American Association of School Administrators, almost a third of the nation’s schools were built before 1950, and 43 percent were built in the 1950s and 1960s. Virtually all are due for replacement, because of wear and tear or because their configuration and technological capabilities are inadequate for the demands of current education.

Most schools report having sufficient computers and other basic technological tools, but say they are unable to use them fully because they lack elements like additional telephone lines for modems or adequate electrical wiring.