Aside from schools offering the traditional three R’s, reading, writing and arithmetic, they have been remiss in teaching children who grow up to be adults, responsibility.

The lead editorial in today’s Herald tells a story about the crumbling infrastructure of school buildings.  Neglect to provide for continued upkeep is just one more example of serious disrespect of Public Education in the State of Florida. There are not too many places in this country where schools have top priority.

School buildings are blamed for lack of repair and logical built in expenses to keep them safe and provide high standards of environmental surroundings. It is the public that disrespects the schools and allows them to fall into ruin. School buildings need not be palaces but they should reflect the values education has in the hearts and minds of their citizens.  Programs that selectively make some school plants exemplary completely ignore the crumbling of our neighborhood public schools.  An elite system, always present in private and parochial schools, has arisen where neglect of public buildings (always the schools) has created a second and third class of buildings that only the parents of children in those schools are dimly aware of it.

Public education began when it was better to cheaply educate children of the poor than to build prisons to hold them later on in life.  The early schools had warped floors, leaky windows, roofs, and gaps in their walls where the winter winds had easy access.  It took more than a hundred years to build structures that the public demanded be solid, heated in the winter and filled with sensible seating and equipment that made the process of teaching and learning accountable with school administrations solely dedicated to providing minimal standards at the lowest possible cost. This minimal approach has continued to erode over time.

The political and intellectual climate surrounding the educational process is one in which the PUBLIC SCHOOLS come last in the allocation of funds to support them. If a “new” concept school attracts the attention of parents wanting the best for their children they will support it as long as the children of “others”, less valuable children are excluded.  This seems to be the long-term trend of education.

What has resulted is support for schools where an elite population is gathered and the rest are allowed to rot and no support for neither teachers, equipment nor the buildings is the norm.  This is a shame. Where once the schools were an ornament of the American democratic system responsibility is now missing.