How did school infrastructure become so bad?
Much of the problem with American school infrastructure is simply that it is old, says Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, who testified before the Philadelphia City Council last year about the importance of modernizing school buildings.
Buildings that form part of a “dilapidated” school infrastructure were generally built in the 1970s and were intended to have a useful life of about 50 years.
“There is a huge push to build something, and then there are rarely comparable funds on the operational side to properly maintain it,” Filardo says.
Filardo points out that schools built 50 years ago or more did not take into account the needs of modern teachers and students. They may have classrooms built with only one outlet or kindergarten rooms without bathrooms for those young students. ADA accessibility requirements did not exist until the 1990s.
“We must recognize the human merit that we have learned some things, so now the standards we have to meet are different, they are better and we can create healthier and more educationally rich environments,” says Filardo. “But we don't really have the system to deliver it as well or support it, so we're playing catch-up.”
There are also millions more children in schools today than when many school buildings were built, Filardo says. This includes not only population growth, but also the inclusion of children who were previously out of school.
“In many ways, public schools have taken over children's social services,” Filardo says. “So social workers, psychologists, special education services are now provided in public schools, and that wasn't what used to happen. The children were more institutionalized, they were not in school. “It was really a different environment.”
Guy Bliesner, president of the National School Facilities Council, says funding for school buildings has long been a local issue, with occasional support from the state. Many districts saw their student populations grow into the 1980s, and enrollment in rural districts was particularly affected as families moved to urban areas.
“Schools that were built to hold 200 to 250 students now have 70 students and they can't afford the opportunity to rebuild the school because of the cost,” Bliesner says. “So they're stuck using a facility that was built in the '50s or '60s, trying to continually maintain it and serve the community that's there now.”
Brandon T. Payne, executive director of the National School Facilities Council and a colleague of Bliesner, says school districts typically go into debt when they build new facilities, but maintenance must come from their operating budget. That means if the funds are not in the bank, those maintenance needs are deferred. And if the economy is down (i.e. sales or property taxes go down), that means district budgets will also be affected.
“We have a significant backlog of deferred maintenance nationally, things that we've postponed because we had a more urgent need to educate students,” Payne says.
Another issue is the quality of the structures. Bliesner says buildings built between the 1930s and 1950s were built with longevity in mind, and quality began to decline in the 1960s.
“In early education we build temples for education,” Bliesner says. “Now we build barns to teach.”
