A Letter To The Editor 1-24-12

Thoughts About BMS, And Closely Related Topics

Wicomico County Council got it exactly correct in its vote not to provide a letter of intent supporting destruction of Bennett Middle School (BMS) and construction of a new BMS in the Fruitland area. The council should resist efforts to have it reverse course on this topic based on whatever ‘found’ money or suddenly changed circumstances from last week are being proffered.

Nobody wants BMS students and staff to suffer during their time in the building, but WCBOE, under both the current and numerous preceding administrations and boards have consciously let maintenance of this school and many others lag deplorably for many, many years. That said, repair and maintenance in most other schools has improved, from personal observation, in recent years.

In my opinion, repeat, in my opinion, WCBOE has been less than forthright in its approach to the BMS issue. Part of this problem is that the State of Maryland funds a large portion of the costs related to new school building construction, and provides very little for renovations. Would you pay out of pocket to fix your older, paid for car if Ricky Pollitt or Marty O’Malley would pay the majority of the cost of a new, larger, more luxurious, more hi-tech one for you? Probably not, right? Same lure exists for county councils and boards of education across the state, and they rarely have said “No” in the recent past.

Slick Ricky has been at Wicomico County’s helm for over 5 years and he has yet to provide a lucid, transparent look at where the money has gone and where it is going. Oft forgotten is that he left a big dimple in a chair for almost 10 years as a member of the WCBOE board prior to running for County Executive. So if he was paying attention, he was in a position to ask about school building maintenance and construction plans, philosophies and practices. Evidence is scarce that he was ever curious.

He was O’Malley’s re-election head in this area so it’s fair to assume he could have the governor’s ear if he wanted it regarding the spending proposals O’Malley planned to float before his rubber-stamp legislature in Annapolis. Instead he appears to have chosen to wait until the last moment to trot out his FY 2013 budget requests and to force the county council to make major decisions, specifically the BMS proposal, without solid information about both 1) funds available to the county and 2) actual cost of the project. In our personal lives, how many of us would sign a blank check without a known source of income? Nothing prohibits Pollitt from informing the council and WCBOE of his plans in advance of the statutory deadline except his desire put them on the spot.

In like fashion, WCBOE has fixated on the notion that in order for the James M Bennett HS (JMB) project to be finalized, BMS must be leveled for additional sports fields, to the tune of $7.5 M, if memory serves. And a new BMS must be erected elsewhere at a cost which has gyrated, with state subsidies which have also been quoted in various sources at widely varying dollar amounts and percentages. Council was wise to have side-stepped this bait-and-switch ruse.

The major shortcoming of the old JMB and the current BMS is that they were overcrowded and lacked air conditioning. Maryland’s school construction regulations generally will only provide funds for a building that will hold the existing student population; this approach has both positive and negative outcomes. The old JMB was greatly overcrowded; the new JMB was basically at authorized capacity when it was opened. That will be the case for BMS if a new building is constructed. BMS could be renovated and enlarged to deal with these problems, if WCBOE wasn’t fixated on the knock-it-down syndrome. It was clear to those watching the telecast council meeting last week that no serious effort was made at WCBOE to really compare the cost and benefits of a renovation versus a new building.

How many of us heard parents or teachers or other adult figures we respected tell us “Where there’s a will there’s a way” when we came up with weak arguments while seeking not to do something? The plain fact is that some years back, when money was more readily available at federal, state and local levels, WCBOE decided to get its Christmas list for JMB and BMS filled in a two step fashion; JMB first and BMS second. Since then economic circumstances have changed dramatically for the worse and the previous plans are no longer financially viable. Since they never made a Plan B for either school (renovation) for county council or the public to consider and evaluate, WCBOE has elected to double-down by tying in with the newspaper to promote photos and articles which graphically demonstrate just how BMS has been left to deteriorate. Most of the photos show easily remedied tasks.

I’m not an engineer or an architect, but I am “handy” as are many other local residents. Renovation shows abound on TV. To suggest BMS, already bought and paid for long ago, couldn’t be retro-fitted with A/C, couldn’t be re-glazed (WiMiddle was recently) with high performance windows, and couldn’t get additional electric service (if needed) is to insult the public and the council. A/C could be run through the halls and into classrooms or externally. An elevator could be constructed adjacent to the current stairwells to service the upper floor; two if both wings need the feature. Could each of these items be added, incrementally, without interrupting instruction and for millions less than the sums that have been bandied about? You know it; I know it and so do all the local contractors capable of doing the work with local crews!

As an example, in 2005, BMS used to have 2 classrooms specifically for computer instruction, and another classroom converted for computer testing and drills, in addition to a number of computer stations in the media center (library), in addition to many classrooms with multiple computers. Yesterday’s on-line newspaper photos purported to show a clogged media center as the sole computer resource in the school; if this is the case it is because of subsequent administrative decisions and not because of inadequacies in the building.

Across the past decade WCBOE has utilized portable classroom trailers as its preferred band-aid for space needs as enrollment increased or programs proliferated at individual schools; BMS had relatively few trailers until recent years.

Councilman Culver made a very interesting observation in the council meeting when he stated that North Carolina has a uniform set of blueprints for schools. Why we should need individual, customized plans for these structures makes no sense and only runs the costs up; incremental changes based on experience are to be expected, but constructing architectural edifices just to show what is possible or fashionable no longer has merit.

Council: Stand firm and ratify your courageous and proper decision from last week. Mr. Matt Holloway and Mr. Hall; join with those who are not interested in squandering our scarce financial resources. Fix what we have before building anew.

Sincerely,

An Interested Reader