Why aren’t schools in poor communities built to meet local students’ needs?
Dilapidated schools are about neglected communities, not poor construction
Federal official visits dilapidated Gary school buildings
Building a school just for academic security is like building a home just to keep dry from rainstorms. Such thinking on school construction minimizes the opportunities to ameliorate the conditions that make life hard.
In places like New Orleans, schooling isn’t the only inequality leaving students and their families out in the rain. The lack of quality jobs, transportation, recreational facilities and safe neighborhoods keeps families and their children in poverty.
The construction of a school presents opportunities that extend beyond what eventually is taught in a classroom. How and where a school is built matters.
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Last month I spoke at two separate architecture conferences. TheNational Organization of Minority Architects Annual Conference and The Education Market Association’s EdSpaces Conference, which focuses on sustainable design on environmental impact on learning. To be sustainable, schools must look at the here and now; we throw the phrase “21st century schools” around like a football, and we look beyond the people calling for the ball. Students and families need school construction projects to respond to their neighborhoods in the immediate and distant futures.
Yes, schools should prepare students for the unforeseen world that’s ahead of them. But if learners aren’t prepared for what’s in front of their faces, then we’re missing the point. What does a Common Core curriculum mean to students at risk of being shot? In cities like New Orleans, in which one in seven black men are in prison or on parole, Why aren’t schools in poor communities built to meet local students’ needs? - The Hechinger Report: