A public, educational school or a fifty year old, rotting cement heap? | Teen Ink

A public, educational school or a fifty year old, rotting cement heap?

January 16, 2012
By SpeedWriter BRONZE, Franklin Park, New Jersey
SpeedWriter BRONZE, Franklin Park, New Jersey
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

My middle school, used to be the High School. It was used and abused by the former high schoolers like a two year old treats their toys. After being brought down to the ground from its former glory when it was still freshly built back in the day the high schoolers began to rant to the head of the school board “We want a new school!”. After forty years from when the school was first built they finally had their wish granted. Now the high schoolers went to a beautiful and colossal palace of a school and guess what happened to the old high school? It was turned into a hand-me-down middle school. Now with all the damage left over by the old high schoolers and the increasing damage being caused everyday by the middle schoolers shouldn’t the school board give them a big break just like they did to the high schoolers?

Earlier during the week before the long-awaited Christmas vacation/winter break a brave and young reporter decided to take on the challenge to find all the damage that has been caused to this school and why most of it hasn’t been dealt with. Some of the evidence left behind by mistreating teenagers was completely atrocious almost in a draconian sort of manner. The main concern about damage that the young reporter observed that happened everyday was the constant banging of the lockers. This repetitive action was causing many lockers around the school to begin to cave inwards. Some lockers didn’t even have doors attached and furthermore students kept damaging it. On one occasion the reporter came across a large window panel that was completely cracked in one corner as if someone had head butted it. It was a big safety issue especially because it was right above the stair well where it could have completely cracked and pieces of broken glass would have fallen on unfortunate kids down below. Luckily later in the day the large panel was removed by a school custodian. But that was only one of the hundreds of different small and big problems this school still needs to take care of yet some of those problems are ignored.

To further explain how much damage to the school was done per day the reporter conducted an experiment in two different areas. The experiment was to prove how fast something like a desk, locker, or floor was damaged by malicious students who have no care for their learning environment. He started by observing his very own desk during second period in the Health classroom. There was evidence that someone was beginning to peel of the cover that conceals the wooden part of the desk on the top because there was puncture holes from pens or pencils that had been slicing some of the material off. The second object he decided to observe was a slightly broken tile neighboring his desk during his Literacy class. During a course of five days of observing the bitter destruction of the two objects both had severely changed. The desk on the second day had quite a load of material torn off with new signs of quite vulgar writing. The Health teacher seemed to not even take note of the progressing situation with the desk and obviously left the matter alone since by the end of the week the whole entire cover had been torn off. Along with that observation, the slightly broken tile was also not being controlled either. On the same second day of the observation the tile had gone from slightly broken to completely broken and a second tile had begun to emerge with broken pieces. At the very end of the week the single broken tile had become four completely broken tiles creating a perfect square. On the previous day before the end week, one of the reporter’s colleagues shared an ultimately astonishing picture with him located towards the northwestern corner of the room. The picture was of a huge mess of shattered debris from a large area of broken tiles. This was a perfectly good example of how bad-natured some of the kids are in this school.

Everyday countless repairs are being taken underway to just waste the time and money of school since most of the repairs that are done are left incomplete or not even acceptable. Plus kids are going to be breaking more and more things in the school that have become fragile because of old age. If the school is going to burn through their limited budget in this way why wouldn’t they use all that money being spent on countless small repairs to just thoroughly and correctly refurbish the entire
building with new coats of paint, new flooring, new roofing, new desks, laptops, and computers, etc. Couldn’t the cause of this poor learning environment be the bad ultimatum into why the students behave with such meager and absolutely disrespectful behavior? Wouldn’t it also affect how teachers are teaching or treating students as well?


The author's comments:
The fact that my school feels like it's getting the job when it really isn't inspired me to write a report because it just isn't right the matter should be taken more seriously considering how old my school is.

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