More school board treachery

The latest in our school district's desperate (even the newspaper headlines are calling them "desperate" now) attempt to find a place to plop a big ol' 8th and 9th grade school is a proposal to tear down a perfectly good elementary school and build the new monster mega school in its place. This sort of idea leads me to believe that the school board is so annoyed at all the objections they've been getting so far that now they're just deliberately trying to tick people off. We've moved from "We'd like to put a new school in your neighborhood" to "We're going to tear down your neighborhood school, send your little kids somewhere else, and bring a whole bunch of adolescents in to take their place." If that's not purposely provocative, I don't know what is.

So we're sure to have another big protest movement on our hands. I'm waiting for fighting between the different protest factions to start breaking out in the streets. Tempers are high. And all of it makes me realize how glad I am that I've never been the kind of person who feels a need to run for the school board or the city council. I mean, God bless folks who want to be public servants, but talk about a thankless job. Clearly, we need some sort of school overcrowding relief. They're about ready to start holding high school classes in the parking lot, the building's so packed (come to think of it, maybe that's why the marching band practices so much). But it's hard to imagine a place or a plan for building extra school space that's not going to make someone mad enough to bring a ton of fliers down on the head of any local politician who supports it. Let others lead; I'll just sit and whine.

The school due to be razed is actually one my kids have attended; it was never our neighborhood school, but it was the site of their particular special-ed programs for a number of years. It's a perfectly serviceable school, albeit a small building on a big piece of land. I would be sad to see it go, though, and sad to think of all those special-ed kids being disrupted. Not that they can't be moved around on the whim of a special-ed administrator anyway, but still. My kids had some happy years in pre-K in a cozy little trailer out back of the building, and I wonder where all those little ones will be booted off to now. Not that I really believe this proposal will fly any farther than any of the other ones have. But sooner or later, somebody's petition's bound to come up short.