This article is the fourth of a series based on my visits to the four campuses comprising the district’s education facilities today.
Senior Ivan Sanchez welcomed us to the south entrance and then bade us follow him to a science lab classroom to the southwest part of campus. The building containing it was built in the 1990s, well after I graduated, and is referred to often, Superintendent of Hope Public Schools Jonathan Crossley said, as the “new” science lab. But when we entered a classroom inside it, we could immediately see that the lab stations that had been used for chemistry and physics experiments were all mostly out of commission and that the room was being used mostly for storage.
“This science class hasn't been renovated,” Sanchez explained. “It hasn't been fixed in quite a while. We have a lot of mildew up there. We have a lot of water damage up in the tiles. Lots of leaks end up happening around here because of how old all of these things are.”
Another student commented, too. “It's been empty for the past two years. They don't even use this room. As you can see, we've got some projects here, but it’s used minimally because of the equipment not working.”
Crossley said this lack of a functional science lab classroom makes it difficult to provide students with the experiences they need in a world increasingly needing those with skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
“We’re a school specifically that wants to be a STEM-related school, and we're pumping money into the overall programming. This is a major hole and, believe it or not, a lab like this and to refurb a room, it's not just the lab tables themselves that are expensive enough, but we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars just to put the science lab in,” he said.
The plan, should voters approve the millage, is to gut the room and put in brand new equipment. An illustration based on this plan can be seen on the millage information website, Crossley said. I found it in the Hope High School Renderings and have included it in our photos below.
Next, we went into the 1931 Hope High main building to get a sense of its bathroom problems, HVAC issue and to look at the classroom furniture.
Our visit to the bathrooms on the first floor turned up the same trouble with locks and lack of privacy as bathrooms at the other schools. Lighting was also quite dim because the kind of fixtures contractors installed tempted students to shatter the fluorescent bulbs. So now there are no bulbs at all.
Crossley explained that a new HVAC system had been installed during renovations following the arson fire which burned the massive library for the school in April of 2005, but afterward staff and students complained of uneven heating and cooling in the building and the impossibility of adjusting the system for the comfort of all the building’s inhabitants. It was then discovered the contractor had installed the sensors in an inverted fashion. Attempts to have the contractor fix the problem did not pan out.
As one of the student guides described it, “The sensor is on the outside, in the hallway, and so teachers don't have an actual temperature on a thermostat in their room where they can control it themselves. So it could be Saharan desert on this side and Alaska on that side all at the same time.”
Indeed this was so. I visited one classroom in which it was so balmy I considered removing my overshirt. But in Jill Self’s English classroom down the hall, hoodies and jackets worn indoors were the norm for the students. The difficulty of concentrating on learning subjects or skills outside your comfort zone is compounded when you’re too hot or too cold.
“I have to run a purifier and a humidifier and storage is always an issue or a problem, but we just do the best that we can,” Self told me.
Another structural issue concerns leaks. These may be from the roof or may be from the plumbing, but whether you’re in the server room downstairs or in the art studio on the top story, there’s wetness enough to douse your would-be masterpiece, your laptop or your shoes if the day happens to be rainy.
Inside the annex building, just outside the classroom which I took Global Studies and World Civilization from the great and influential story-telling teacher Tommye Power, I was shown an example of one of the faulty censors. Such a small item to cause so much trouble and require such expense.
We were then squired to a room in which internet video studio equipment is being set up to be used by students interested in multimedia production, from podcasting to anchoring a news program to broadcasting sports events. As the equipment, which is financed in part by a $15 million US Department of Education Magnet Grant, is being installed, it has to be protected from leaking ceilings.
Under the terms of the grant, none of it can be used for buildings or maintenance of buildings. It is only to enhance student experiences. (Commenters on social media that cite the grant as a reason not to vote for the millage seem not to realize the trouble school leaders could incur if a penny of the grant were used to address needs outside its parameters.) So the juxtaposition of the cutting edge modern equipment with the stains on the ceiling tiles above it is startling.
Asked what security changes would take place at Hope High as a result of the millage, Crossley said the funds will be used in part for matching funds for state funding that would further harden the entrances, allowing for double doors at the main entrance and shatterproof glass doors. So at Hope High, the warm, safe and dry informal title of the millage definitely applies.
For our next tour stop, we saw something that was not startling so much as disturbing and dangerous: the state of the support beams and joints under the home bleachers at the 1932-built Hammonds Stadium. While we could see evidence there of fill-ins to deal with the most urgent threats to structural stability, we could still see separations among the joints. Passage of the millage would mean work to strengthen seating in the stadium where the Bobcats play, plus improvements to the Hope Bands shell.
Crossley said the state of repair of the stadium seating on both sides stays just a little ahead of what would get games officially shut down by state inspectors. “Everywhere you have these areas where it's different color, they literally were on the brink of being condemned. I think people need to really understand that this is a five-year process. I'm already two years into that five years, so we're looking at another $70 to 100,000 just to make sure it doesn't get condemned. In order to fix the problem, we've got to do something more structural.”
Hope Bobcats Coach Phil Turner revealed how things have deteriorated over on the visitors side. “Three years ago, on the visitors side, we had to condemn and rope off half of the visitor side over there. We have some cracks in it. The engineer came down during football season. He said he would be back after graduation to look at it again.”
Voters in the district will have the chance to approve the millage starting with early voting February 17th at the Hempstead County Courthouse.
For more information see Crossley's interview on our SWARK.Today episode of Investigating the Issues. There is also the district’s extremely informative website on their proposal. To join the campaign as a volunteer, the Friends of Hope School District can be contacted through their Facebook page.
