No More Excuses: Modernize Our Schools Now

Today, the Montgomery County Board of Education will vote on a recommended capital budget for fiscal 2010.

The recommendation proposes to keep the current schedule for modernizing four of our most dilapidated high schools: Paint Branch, Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Seneca Valley. That sounds like good news, but we are receiving signals that the revenue assumptions in the recommendation may not come to pass and that this budget may be cut in the coming months.

These indications are very troubling to the parents of students in Montgomery schools. It is particularly troubling to the communities on the high school modernization list, because last year the school board delayed improvements at those schools because of budget concerns. Last year, the board's actions said that the modernizations were the lowest priority and that it would fund them with the last dollars in the budget.

In other words, the board's actions said that modernizing Paint Branch, Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Seneca Valley were luxuries, not necessities. I respectfully disagree.

Those four schools, next on the modernization list, are precisely the ones in which Montgomery school administrators are trying to increase the system's effectiveness. They have some of the county's highest percentages of minority, non-English-proficient, high-poverty and special education students.

For example, of the 25 high schools in the county, these four schools have the first, eighth, ninth and 11th highest poverty levels, according to 2007 data. So how can the school system "raise the bar and close the gap" when it handicaps its neediest students with its most inadequate facilities?

The prospect of delays in these schools is even more unpalatable when compared with those the county has modernized in the past 10 years. They were predominantly in highly affluent areas and also included its two premier magnet schools. Although the list of schools in line for modernization was based on two facilities assessments performed in the 1990s, the worst schools in the second assessment (Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Seneca Valley) were not scheduled for improvements until every school from the first had been addressed.

That allowed the facilities at Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Seneca Valley to deteriorate to a critical condition, which has created an unfortunate situation in which many in the affected communities think Montgomery is favoring its more privileged schools over those in its most economically disadvantaged areas.

At Gaithersburg High School, the conditions are, to be frank, embarrassing. Every day, students and teachers cope with leaky ceilings, cinder blocks placed on HVAC units to reduce noisy vibrations, unsafe hallways and facilities that are well beyond their useful lives.

In September, our Student Government Association president testified at a school board community forum about his AP world history classroom. When a heating unit broke down, the temperature in the classroom stayed below 50 degrees for more than a week in the dead of winter. He said that he could not concentrate because of the conditions and that the room cost him his chance to receive an A in the course.

Does the condition of Gaithersburg High give our students their best opportunity to succeed? Is the county giving that school's students the same opportunity it is providing to students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Churchill, Blair and Richard Montgomery -- four of the schools it has modernized over the past 10 years? I submit that the answer is a clear and emphatic "no."

Thankfully, we have a lot of moral support for our plight.

Superintendent Jerry D. Weast has said that Gaithersburg's modernization is "long overdue" and "absolutely necessary."

Gaithersburg officials are on record saying that replacement of Gaithersburg High's building is "critical to providing a facility that promotes quality education of our students."

The Montgomery Village Foundation, representing more than 40,000 residents of Montgomery Village, said: "We cannot emphasize strongly enough that the condition of the Gaithersburg High School facilities is deplorable and negatively impacts students and teachers."

But only the school board and County Council can give us relief. If our decisions are to be guided first and foremost by what is best for the students, then the board must ensure that it funds the modernizations on its current schedules. They need to become the board's top priority. Board members must fund these projects with the first dollars in the budget, not the last.

At a recent board work session, school system staff members referred to the modernizations as "the elephant in the room." They are right in one respect: The elephant does not go away if they ignore it. It did not go away when the modernizations were deferred last year. And it will not go away if they are delayed yet again. On the contrary, the elephant becomes a bigger and more complex problem the longer one tries to pretend it does not exist.

So, if the communities of Paint Branch, Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Seneca Valley are "elephants," they are fed up with being neglected, passed over and delayed. It is time for the Board of Education to stop accepting excuses and to complete the modernizations. Now.

Steve Augustino is a resident of Gaithersburg. His daughter is a senior at Gaithersburg High School, and he is co-coordinator for the Gaithersburg cluster of the Montgomery County Council of Parent Teacher Associations.