‘Borderline criminal’: Many public schools teeter on the edge of decrepitude
RICHMOND — Each morning for several years, Keri Treadway switched the classroom lights on and stomped loudly to frighten away the mice. She checked the sticky traps. She swabbed tables with disinfectant wipes and cleared droppings from the colorful rug where her kindergarten students sat.
After the school day ended, Treadway rested her legs on a chair to avoid the scurrying rodents. The routine at William Fox Elementary School persisted until the 108-year-old brick building in the city’s vibrant Fan neighborhood was visited by exterminators last year.
Treadway isn’t familiar with much else. She has taught for 16 years in Richmond Public Schools, learning to adapt to deteriorating buildings. But she pauses when she hears from friends who teach elsewhere, in schools that are not rundown.
“You’re like, ‘Wait a minute, clearing up mouse droppings — that’s part of my daily routine,’ ” she said.
There are other routines teachers and students have ritualized to cope with building conditions in the 24,760-student school system.
They dress in layers, bundling up in heavy winter coats and scarves when classrooms become frigid, or peeling off sweaters when rooms are sweltering. They find ways to work around leaky roofs and falling ceiling tiles and mold, windows that don’t open and restrooms without stall doors.
The experience is familiar to schoolchildren in financially struggling districts throughout the country — from Baltimore to Detroit to rural Colorado — who are forced to contend with failing boilers and vermin.
Substandard conditions can compromise students’ attendance and performance, leading to absenteeism and lower achievement, studies show. Parents, students and teachers in some states have sued over neglected school buildings and inadequate resources, arguing, with mixed results, that poor conditions undermine CONTINUE READING: ‘Borderline criminal’: Many public schools teeter on the edge of decrepitude - The Washington Post
