$500 million dollars might sound like alot to spend on school buildings

Why oh why must people raise a stink about the future for our children? I ask this because there is currently alot of opposition to a plan for Fort Wayne Community Schools to spend $500 Million on upgrading their crumbling and decrepit facilities. A good background on the issue is found at this article in the Journal-Gazette. And while that may seem like alot of money, especially when property taxes will likely jump $330 per $100,000 of assessed value for homeowners you must remember that FWCS has nearly 50 schools serving well over 30,000 students as well as two transportation hubs and other administrative facilities. So in doing the math this breaks down to roughly $10 million per school. This is the second largest school district in the state and many of the school buildings date back to the 1960's or earlier and as a result they require some much needed repairs and upgrades to bring them into compliance with current building and safety codes.

I have one child in first grade currently and one that is 14 months old who will in a few years use these schools himself, so honestly, $330 extra per year seems like it would be beneficial to them. Of course, there is alot of opposition and it is organized and a remonstrance has either been filed or soon will be to derail this plan. The way I see it, is that if we don't act now to fix these buildings, the costs of doing so in the future will only continue to escalate and likely at a higher rate than that of base inflation due to additional repairs and upgrades that will be needed then but not now.

I only wish that the district would have done something about this sooner... like 10 years ago as i believe that the financial impact to taxpayers would have been much less, however past school boards were ineffective and haven't had the will or the perseverance to ask the taxpayers for money to do this in the past, and by playing the waiting game the stakes have already been raised to a level that more people are finding unacceptable. Better late than never though, I guess.

While I do support this plan, I would like the school board to also consider the possibility of just simply raising some of the older building that are more expensive to maintain on an ongoing basis and just build anew. This might mean higher upfront costs, but lower operating expenses in the years ahead. Again though, forward thinking seems to be something that can't be accomplished by the school board because they can't get the public to wrap their heads around such a simple concept here to sell it to the tax base who vote for the members of the school board.

Please Fort Wayne, lets make our schools something we can all be proud of and a model admired by educators and administrators worldwide.