Construction Frenzy
Bogus Overcrowded School Crisis
By Daniel Muniz
Growing school districts love overcrowded schools. Even though
districts have already spent huge sums of money without having much
to show for it in the quality of an education, an overcrowded school
offers the opportunity to chase after substantially more tax
dollars. Sadly, the results are for the construction of unnecessary
expensive school buildings.
Yet, the leadership of many of our schools do not want to examine
any long-term alternatives that will benefit the taxpayer without
diminishing the value of the education being taught.
First of all, student populations for individual schools
fluctuate wildly, especially when there is a lot of residential
development in the suburbs. New subdivisions often attract young
couples with children, which will spike a school population. But
that spike isn’t permanent. Of course it will last for several years
but once the development subsides, which always happens in cycles,
the student population will plummet.
There are already plenty of schools deep inside of a city that
have empty but expensively built classrooms. In fact, every city
experiences the problem of merging nearby schools because of
declining enrollment. Overcrowded schools are only a temporary
phenomenon and must be treated as such.
Unfortunately, school officials only see the problem through
dollar-covered lenses instead of focusing on long-term solutions.
There are plenty of practical ways to deal with the transitory
problem of too many students. However the perception of an
overcrowded school is nothing more than waving dollar bills to our
bureaucrats. They simply see it as an easy justification for more
money to build more costly buildings.
As an example, my parents live in the suburbs that are now
experiencing rapid growth again. There is a new elementary school
that recently opened a few miles away from their house. The first
day of class, the campus already had a handful of portable buildings
located on its grounds. Naturally, many parents were upset that a
new school could be built that was already overcrowded for the first
day of business. On the surface, all the planning for the school
seemed to border on stupidity. Consequently, it didn’t take much for
voters to approve additional funding to finance bonds for the
construction of more school buildings.
But more expensive buildings are not needed.
In the modern age of urban sprawl, it may smack of vulgarity to
suburbanites that their children can be educated in a classroom made
of wood instead of concrete and steel. That is, students taught in
portable building instead of a permanent structure.
A school campus only needs a core set of permanent buildings.
Most school districts do not have a requirement that every student
must be educated in concrete and steel.
As a result, a core target of the optimum number of a student
population needs to be ascertained. Afterwards, a school should only
be built with permanent structures for that estimate. It is not
rocket science to mathematically derive those numbers especially
since private industry does it all the time in their effort to
market to consumers.
Adjacent to the core group of permanent structures, an area needs
to be designated strictly for temporary buildings.
This area should house the temporary facilities for years to come
and its format should be identical for all campuses in the district.
In addition, all utility connections need to be built to it so when
temporary facilities are placed there, it can be efficiently
attached to the existing utilities.
And the real savings lie in the economies of scale. If an entire
school district can create a 10 or 20 year master plan, they can
efficiently build or purchase a number of temporary facilities to
just one specification. One building built the same way a few dozen
times is a lot cheaper than finding several different ones at wildly
divergent prices and specifications.
When the student population of a particular school does decline,
that portable can simply be moved to the next school that is
experiencing rapid growth. That way a campus isn’t stuck with an
empty but costly classroom.
But what about the quality of the education that is taught inside
a portable building?
Now that is an interesting question. Does quality diminish
because a student is not inside a shiny new and expensive building
or is it really contingent on the quality of the school and of the
educator?
A temporary facility has to have electricity and the basic
necessities. If the adjacent area is appropriately planned and
correctly configured, such connections to the necessities shouldn’t
be a problem. But the real kicker is that the student is not being
taught in the permanent structure. Plenty of old-timers are more
than happy to explain life in their school days. And it had nothing
to do with trudging 20 miles in snow to get to school. Older people
still got a quality education even from a Spartan environment (some
got it without air conditioning; imagine that). Kids are not going
to emotionally devastated if they have to spend an entire class year
in a portable building.
Unfortunately, bureaucrats see absolutely no need to wisely plan
ahead. They can always squeeze more money because of the false
perception that our children cannot learn in crowded conditions. The
overcrowding can be easily alleviated if and only if the public
force changes on to our school boards and requires them to examine
all the possibilities.
There is no need for schools to end up with empty classrooms ten
years after the false crisis has subsided.
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