This Old School House

This week a school was closed in Auburn. I watched as adults and children reacted to the emotions they felt as they spent one last day inside. I was struck by the way people spoke of the new school they were going to. It was like they were being forced to pick a new best friend. Details of this LA school closing are all rather controvercial. I just want to make sure this doesn't happen in Portland. Our neighborhood schools are community centers. Closing them would be devastating to Portland's communities.
There is a strong move towards consolidation at the state level. Governor Baldacci has put forward an incentive based program that may be entising to city reps and school committee members. The program rewards efficency it says. It however really just encourages homogeneity. A new school may have better heating systems, be cheaper to build than renovate the old one, and be in a higher density area. It lacks a history however, which is what makes my Portland what it is. I live in a community that values its past. We destroy a symbol each time we decommission a school. A school is a living symbol of our educational history. When we turn it into a condo we are rendering the areas history of education lifeless.
Portlanders have not seen the last of this issue. We house many small schools. Interested parties recently proposed a plan that would put Reiche School out of business and send West End kids elsewhere. This supposedly would benefit the tax payer but there are certain fees that are hard to assess. What is the value of a walk to school? How much is a strong community history of education worth? How much should we assess community in dollar terms? Rather than engaging in these excersizes in futility perhaps we should start thinking of how we can make our existing schools even better.
Baldacci has many good ideas for Maine, this may even be one of them but not for Portland. He has set his sites on consolodating the less urban centers where efficiency over community will assume less of a role. Community in parts north is not centered around walkable schools. This makes consolidation not representive of my city’s educational system.