If anyone deserves to be labeled a “final authority” on a subject, it is Lois Longin with her outlook on the plan to replace three aging Swampscott elementary schools with one new school.
Swampscott Public Schools’ former curriculum director also served during her education tenure as principal of the Clarke and Hadley schools. Longin spoke from the perspective of an educator (Item, June 28) when she used the words, “slum,” and “health hazard” to describe the aging schools.
The Hadley was built in 1911 — the same year the Titanic was still being built. Stanley was erected the year the Great Depression began — 1929 — and the relatively-young Clarke dates back to the 1950s.
Massachusetts, with its five centuries of history, has plenty of old buildings that have yet to reach the end of their safe and useful lives. But Longin’s informed indictment of the town’s three elementary schools underscores the wisdom and hard work local school officials and town building committee volunteers demonstrated in addressing the town’s aging school problem.
There is an obvious and understandable, longtime attraction to preserving neighborhood schools like Clarke, Hadley and Stanley — especially for town residents who attended the schools and now send their children to them.
But Longin is not the only authority on local education who points to the three schools and concludes that the town is throwing good money after bad by continuing their use.
The proposed town-wide school has received a state funding commitment of up to $34 million and the cost of construction to be borne by the average single-family household is commuted at a dollar a day.
Opting to keep three old schools functioning is a commitment to pouring money for maintenance into buildings that, as Longin said, possess air quality problems and face serious deficits in their ability to handle the electrical loads required to support 21st-century technology.
Replacing three schools with one centralizes maintenance costs and provides students with a state-of-the-art school.
Schools were once the focal point for educating young minds. Not anymore: Hand-held technology is now the teacher and technology showed its strengths and deficits as an educational tool during the pandemic.
It’s time for Swampscott to shed its past when it comes to educating young minds and embrace the 21st-century school its students — and future generations — deserve.
