This week brought us one of the most ridiculous stories of the year. Front page news in the paper: one of our elementary school principals has been suspended for 1) not allowing a father to personally deliver birthday cupcakes to his daughter's 4th grade classroom and 2) realizing that since a verbal and generally understood policy probably needs a published side also, putting the information about the policy online on the school website after the parent had left.
Cupcakegate.
Meanwhile, Betty Boop the superintendent apparently has nothing better to do than listen to this disgruntled parent whine. And now the principal has a lawyer, the unions are involved, the district lawyers are involved, the papers are selling like hotcakes, and tax dollars are evaporating. I'm wondering what exactly it is that the superintendent would like to distract us all so much from.
Hmmmm.
Let's see. The district had to go to the town and request additional money so that they could finish the several-million-dollars-over-budget new elementary school which is 18 months months behind schedule, and also get money to clean up the mold in the modular classrooms those kids have been housed in for 3 years during construction. Oh, and let's not forget finding money to move all those kids and teachers around the district so they could finish the school year when the modulars had to be closed due to contamination.
This summer there are millions of dollars worth of renovation projects going on across the district. Using what has occurred over the last four weeks at my school as a sample, I can say definitively that there will also be significant cost overruns on those projects. Why? Here's our situation:
The projects approved for our school include removing the carpet in the media center and large meeting room, and replacing it with a combination of carpet and tile. The gym foundation has sunk past the point of no return, so they will be removing the foundation in about 4/5 of the gym (everything except the girls' locker room, where is title IX when we need it?), and replacing the foundation with one which has supports driven to bedrock, replacing the gym floor, remodeling the boys' locker room, and creating a fitness center space where the old "gang showers" used to be. Unforgiveably, they are leaving the girls' locker room, smelly, mildewy and dilapidated as it is -- ALONE. Beyond that, they are painting approximately 1/3 of the building.
Sounds good, right? Sounds like they are tackling some major issues, yes? Yes, but not well planned.
They allotted $30K to replace the carpet. Given the age and condition of the facility, they are required to test for asbestos. They did this not long ago, and the results came back predictably positive. So now we are looking at major asbestos abatement which will cost upwards of $50-60K. That doesn't include the cost of packing and moving everything out of the media center -- all shelves, 18,000 books, equipment, computers, furniture... which we are now faced with. Add to this the fact that we have ancient shelving which is not only ugly as hell, but heavy, bolted together yet falling apart, and only through direct divine intervention will all of it survive being moved out and back in. Shelving is pretty expensive -- just replacing the five wall sections in the reference area will cost at least $4K. The freestanding sections are even more expensive. All in all, we've gone from a basic $30K replacement to over $100K of costs because no one considered advance planning other than "gee the rug hasn't been replaced in over 30 years, guess we better do that because the principal's pushing for it."
That's not even starting with the gym project. They've been drilling holes to try to determine what's under the foundation (and in it) and figure out what the story is with the walls, but the reality is that they are very likely going to find some more expensive surprises once they open that all up. That happened when they built the addition to the school several years ago -- they discovered that the major outside wall supports of the original building which were supposed to be filled with concrete were hollow, rusting, and in danger of collapsing -- so if we wanted to attach the new building to the old we had to fix the original rusting supports so that the buildings wouldn't pull each other down. What's SUPPOSED to be there according to the plans ain't necessarily so. And this is what you get when you go with the low bidder on a job.
All in all, I think Betty Boop downtown has better things to do that deal with Cupcakegate. Either that, or if she really does think that bullshit is important enough for her phenomenally expensive time, then the board needs to tell her "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."
I think quelling the mass exodus of talented people from the district, turning around the despicably toxic atmosphere of mistrust and mismanagement, and being responsible about the major projects being undertaken all far outstrip the needs of somebody who's pissed off about 9 year olds and cupcakes.
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