Tech students repairing old lockers at Pickering

LYNN-With a slumping economy wreaking havoc on a tight School Department budget it is often difficult for principals to oversee minor repairs to their school buildings.While the Inspectional Services Department is in charge of maintenance and cleanliness, some projects can still fall through the financial cracks, leaving manageable, but still annoying problems at some schools.For Pickering Middle School Principal Robert Murphy, one particularly annoying problem has been the state of the school’s lockers, many of which are dented, missing parts or all-together unusable.Through a partnership with Lynn Tech and its director James Ridley, Murphy is now welcoming students from the school’s metal shop to work on the lockers, creating a win-win situation for all involved.”It is good what they are doing. They get to practice what they have learned in shop class and the kids here get the benefit of getting their lockers repaired,” Murphy said. “It gives them a real-world application to what they are learning and it also helps them give back to the community.”Students from Arthur Badger’s metal shop visit Pickering on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, working from around 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. repairing lockers throughout the school. Murphy provides lunch, and Inspectional Services provides the materials needed, but it is the students who provide the hard labor.The effort serves as the LVTI students’ shop hours for the week, providing them experience on an actual job site, rather than simply in the school’s shop.”We can’t tell you how happy we are with the work these kids have done. We hear a lot of compliments from the teachers here for their work ethic,” said Murphy. “They are polite, they are respectful. This is a loud project at times, and they have been apologetic to the teachers for disturbing the class. This has been very positive for us.”Pickering is truly one of the city’s oldest gems. Built in 1916 the foundation is seemingly sturdy enough to survive the apocalypse, but the inside of the building shows some areas of neglect as peeling paint and aging windows provide clues to the building’s age.Teachers say the lockers have been deteriorating for more than a decade. Some are bent and cannot be closed; others are missing latches, springs, hinges and doors, in some cases, forcing Murphy to assign more than one student to a locker.Working from the basement up to the third floor, the students will repair more than 200 lockers, whether it is a simple hammering out of a dent or the replacement of a latch.”What it does is it shows these kids and it shows their parents that this school cares,” said Murphy. “One of my initiatives when I was hired (last summer) was to make sure we got some of these small repairs done, and this is just the beginning. It is also a plus because the students get to see this and they know that it is for them.”