Aaron Apps: The appalling condition of R.I. schools

Last summer, I wrote a Commentary piece (“City’s schools require immediate repairs,” Aug. 29) describing the conditions I witnessed inside Gilbert Stuart Middle School in Providence’s West End. To reiterate: The paint is peeling off of the walls, the roof is leaking, ceiling tiles are falling down, the water is non-potable, and there is a giant curtain in the main auditorium made of asbestos. Not to mention probable mold, exposed rusty pipes, and piles of unattended-to bird droppings.

Since writing the piece, I’ve heard horror stories about other schools being even worse than Gilbert Stuart, as well as anecdotes about teachers in certain schools having strangely high incidences of cancer. These latter points are based on piecemeal evidence (even if I don’t find them particularly hard to believe), so I won’t dwell on them, but I did come across a report that puts the condition of Gilbert Stuart into perspective.

The Rhode Island Department of Education’s 2013 “Public Schoolhouse Assessment” gave Gilbert Stuart a rating of 2 in its scale that ranges from 1 to 4, where 1 is “good” condition and 4 is “poor” condition. The report rates 304 public schools. Of these, the average rating was 2.05, meaning that Gilbert Stuart, in its appalling, unacceptable condition, is slightly better than average, according to the state’s own rating scale.

For schools with a rating of 2, RIDE estimates it would cost school districts $86 per square foot to get the schools into shape. For schools with a rating of 3, the number is $147, and for those with a rating of 4, $273.

Before delving into how these numbers break down, it is worth stepping back and noting that these aren’t just numbers reflecting costs. They reflect the quality of the buildings in which students and teachers are spending their days. One might imagine that “cost per square feet” equates to a numerical designator for things like “cost to student and teacher health,” “emotional cost of being devalued as a person,” “socioeconomic and cultural cost to community for devaluing future citizens,” and so on.

When the statistics are broken down further, things get even more disturbing. Some 49 percent of schools (or 149 schools) in Rhode Island were given a rating of 2, the same rating as Gilbert Stuart. In addition, 39 schools were given a rating of 3, and another 14 were given the worst rating on the scale, or a 4. Functionally, half the schools in the state are just as bad as Gilbert Stuart, and 53 schools are even worse. All of these schools are doing damage to the students and teachers occupying them.

RIDE’s report also points out the value of the schools themselves, a number of which are worth many millions of dollars. The longer we neglect these buildings, the greater the eventual cost will be for their repair.

Mount Hope High School, in Bristol, for example, is worth $54 million, according to the report, which also gave the school a 2 rating. These valuable public buildings are being left to rot, and the students and teachers are rotting inside right along with them.

The moratorium on school repairs should be lifted ASAP, and concrete measures taken to make sure that Rhode Island’s schools are neither hazardous nor insulting to the students and teachers inside them.

Aaron Apps is a doctoral student in English literature at Brown University.