What Schools?

The American Prospect wants to spend a lot more money “fixing” school buildings:

Public school facilities—mostly ignored in discussions of the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges, ports, and highways—face an urgent infrastructure crisis of their own. Indeed, it has been getting worse for decades: In 1995, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report estimating that $112 billion was needed to repair and modernize the nation’s school facilities, and that as many as 28 million students attended schools deemed unhealthy, uncomfortable, and unsafe. The problem was most acute for poor students and racial minorities. In 1997, President Bill Clinton declared: “We cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally falling down. With the student population at an all-time high, and record numbers of school buildings falling into disrepair, this has now become a serious national concern.”

But little progress was made, and inequities between rich and poor school districts grew wider. By 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave public school facilities a “D+” grade on its national report card. The group found that school construction had diminished to approximately half the level spent before the Great Recession, even as public school enrollment continued to grow. By one 2016 estimate, it would take $145 billion a year to properly repair and maintain the nation’s school buildings.

Once again the civil engineers’ professional organization is mute on which schools should be repaired. It merely quotes figures on the expense of repairing existing facilities.

Last year the enrollment in Chicago’s public schools decreased by more than 11,000 students and that’s been going on for decades. The graph at the top of the page illustrates the decline in Chicago public school enrollment over time.

Should Chicago’s decrepit schools be refurbished? Or should they be consolidated and torn down? Now repeat that exercise for hundreds of medium sized and large cities in the Northeast and Midwest.

You know what the civil engineers’ report doesn’t show? The number of schools being built and where.