Learn from past when deciding fate of old school buildings - The contentious history of education in Carroll County

Learn from past when deciding fate of old school buildings - The contentious history of education in Carroll County https://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2017/01/learn-from-past-when-deciding-fate-of.html

“Learn from past when deciding fate of old school buildings - The contentious history of education in Carroll County,” Eagle Archives By Kevin E. Dayhoff, Sunday, November 18, 2015

Recently, on Facebook, “Carroll Unite,” remarked: “Without getting into whether schools should have been closed or not, we now find ourselves as a county not finding the savings the commissioners thought would so surely come by closing schools. While the schools may be spending less, now there is the burden of what to do with three empty properties.

"Our thought: The county commissioners should have had a more frank and detailed discussion about what would happen to the three properties once the schools were closed PRIOR to forcing the board's hand in the closings. Some of that discussion should have taken place with Guthrie and the BOE. Again, our commissioners failed to plan ahead appropriately." 

https://www.facebook.com/CarrollUnite/posts/1005792202859170

To which I added:

Hopefully - this might be of interest…

“Learn from past when deciding fate of old school buildings - The contentious history of education in Carroll County,” Eagle Archives By Kevin E. Dayhoff, Sunday, November 18, 2015 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/carroll/westminster/ph-ce-archives-educat-1115-20151111-story.html

In the past year or so, the local news has dined on a steady diet of discussion and acrimony over various education issues in Carroll County. If you think that our present day public discourse is interesting; researching the contentious history of education in Carroll County is an historian’s dream.

[…]

But it is at times like this that one wonders why old school buildings on college campuses are respected, revered and often saved with great pride; yet older public school buildings, that many taxpayers made huge sacrifices to pay for through hard-earned taxpayer dollars and bake sales, are simply discarded by the government like used candy wrappers after it is no longer convenient to use and maintain them.

Generations upon generations will be sad if the old 1936 Westminster High School building is closed. Especially because in the past, Local and state government have developed a horrific reputation of demolishing old historic public structures by incompetence and willful neglect. (Then again, in recent years, under the current county staff leadership, there are examples in the county of successful adaptive re-use of the old structures.)

It is simply unconscionable to allow a building that was once the vibrant social, emotional and economic center of a community to simply be allowed to die and rot in the middle of that community. Yet public officials do it all the time. I guess they can’t see it from their house.

One can only hope that if old historic public buildings are to be closed that concurrent conversations are taking place to re-use the structures for the benefit of the greater community. It is simply a violation of the public trust to simply allow the buildings to painfully crumble before our eyes.

Read much more here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/carroll/westminster/ph-ce-archives-educat-1115-20151111-story.html

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