Champions of old schools garner galaxy of support

Across the land, community activists are rising up against school boards that want to tear down schools that have served communities for years, often generations.

Consider these recent flyer titles:

"Save San Mateo (Calif.) High School Now — School Board Votes to Demolish Landmark High School."

"Save Kirk Middle School from Demolition and Destruction" (East Cleveland, Ohio).

The situation is familiar — school boards opting for gigantic "sprawl schools" on remote sites to which few can bike or walk.

In times past, the protests might have fallen on deaf ears. But now activists are getting aid from a galaxy of new supporters — historic preservationists, smart growth advocates, supporters of smaller, community-based and more student-responsive schools, and now even the Centers for Disease Control (worried about obesity among children who virtually never walk or ride bikes to school).

The timing is fortuitous. America's communities are on the verge of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to repair or replace their public schools. Enrollments are rising rapidly, driven by grandchildren of baby boomers and children of new immigrants. And the courts are increasingly responsive to lawsuits demanding construction and modernization to relieve inequities between rich and poor areas.

Ohio alone now plans to spend $23 billion on schools over the next 12 years. New Jersey has a $12.3-billion building program. The National Education Association estimates the national need at a stunning $322 billion.

Last fall, the National Trust for Historic Preservation issued a clarion call for smarter school siting — "Historic Neighborhood Schools in the Age of Sprawl — Why Johnny Can't Walk to School," authored by Constance Beaumont.

"The trend of building shopping-mall-sized schools outside town," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust, "alienates students, encourages sprawl and impairs our sense of community."

Topping the trust's list of "public policy culprits" were the minimum-acreage requirements for schools (50 acres for a 2,000-student high school, for example). Promulgated by the Arizona-based Council of Educational Facility Planners International, the acreage requirements are almost blindly adopted by many states.

What such rules totally ignore is that many communities want to keep schools close-in to support vibrant town centers and cohesive neighborhoods.

A prime success story: the 1908-vintage Boise (Idaho) High School, earlier a candidate for demolition. Instead, it was restored and augmented by construction next door of a new technology center. Improvements ranging from fire sprinklers to re-roofing, wheelchair accessibility to data/telephone systems were added. The historic auditorium (where Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby had performed) was elegantly restored.

And then, to avoid degrading the neighborhood with acres of asphalt for parking, the school board sponsored a competition for creative ideas to save space. Three were implemented: reimbursing the local bus system so students could ride to school free; working out shared-parking accords with nearby churches; and making the school more "bike friendly" through better storage facilities.

Because the school stayed in town, interested students can work in a mentoring program for younger, low-income children in a nearby elementary school. Kids can walk to work-study programs at local businesses, see democracy in action at the state capitol, or amble over to the YMCA to work out.

Yet, many states still insist on a "60-percent rule" — no state aid if a school's rehab cost exceeds 60 percent of total replacement cost. Result: many fine old buildings get deserted. The formulas typically ignore costs — like busing — that schools incur when they migrate out of neighborhoods and town centers.

Also ignored: the intrinsic value of many old buildings. "If an older building is equated with a poor education," says the National Trust's Beaumont, "why would anyone want to send a child to an Ivy League college?"

There is a powerful lobby for tearing down old schools and building anew. It includes school construction consultants, architects, builders and their rule-writing allies in state departments of education.

But, change is in the wind. Led by Maryland and Oregon, a handful of states have begun to abandon the notorious acreage requirements.

New Jersey could be a star. Its State Planning Office intends to encourage city and town governments to work actively with school boards in the state's multibillion-dollar school-building program. The conscious goal: to make schools "centers of community," combating sprawl.

Is the United States ready to for the same? Yes, says the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities in a forthcoming report. The vision, it suggests: schools as "a cornerstone around which older neighborhoods are resettled and new, more livable neighborhoods are established."

Indeed, why settle for anything less?

Neal Peirce's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.