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Two parents of students attending the Thompson Elementary School in East Arlington spoke before the school committee meeting last Tuesday. Their message was pretty clear: the concern in East Arlington over the condition of the school is turning into anger. In two articulate speeches, Meg Moloney and Hilary Rappaport took their frustration straight to the school committee.

I last wrote about the Thompson Elementary School last October just before the the MCAS results were released. At this time, the school facilities group was getting ready to submit a statement to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). The purpose of the statement, or SOI, was to convince the MSBA that the Thompson School was a priority 1 case for capital funds for renovation or rebuilding. That statement was submitted in November. However, much has changed since then, especially with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) bringing money into Massachusetts, some of which will be spent on capital projects like rebuilding schools.

The history of this issue goes all the way back to 1998 when the town of Arlington launched an initiative to rebuild all seven elementary schools in the city. 11 years later the Thompson Elementary School and the Stratton Elementary School are the only two that have not been rebuilt. The Stratton Elementary School also has problems, but at this point it appears that the condition of the Thompson Elementary School is sufficiently worse that it is next in line for any significant renovation or rebuilding monies.

And there has been some progress. In late February, Katherine Craven, who is the executive director of the MSBA, came to the Thompson Elementary School for a comprehensive visit. There was a strong turn-out for the meeting from members of the Arlington school system, town officials, state legislators and parents. The visit appeared to leave a strong impression on Katherine Craven, who noted at least two points that were in favor of some action being taken at the Thompson. The first is that the town of Arlington is able to raise some matching money from both left-over funds from the original debt exclusion as well as the sale of two other buildings. This amounts to somewhere between $4M and $8M. The second is that the school is the only Title 1 school in Arlington. Title 1 is a designation that the school’s population is disadvantaged and in particular, economically disadvantaged. Just the fact that she visited is a very positive sign. Still, she seemed to be at least tacitly advocating for renovation as opposed to rebuilding. There is great concern in the Thompson community that a renovation could be squeezed such that the results are inadequate. Although there have been $20M school renovations in Massachusetts, there is fear that a renovation will become an excuse to make the project inexpensive and just focus on replacing the roof, for example, when much more significant work is required.

A few weeks later, Will Brownsberger, a state representative from Belmont, visited and toured the school. He then had a lengthy discussion with several school committee members (Joe Curro, Ron Spangler and Jeff Theilman), members of the Thompson School Rebuild/Equity Task Force (a parent-driven group advocating for the school), Sean Garballey, a state representative and Sherri Donovan, the principal of the school. His advice was to stick with the MSBA process and he was able to talk about some of the issues that were encountered in an ongoing project in Belmont. He also talked about how a repair or renovation is generally faster and easier to get than a complete rebuild.

At the end of this month, on March 25th, to be precise, the MSBA will hold a board meeting and there is the chance they will review and make recommendations on the Thompson Elementary School SOI. If they do, the most likely result is that they will call for a feasibility study. That study would seek to lay out the costs and benefits of both renovation and rebuilding and hopefully recommend a path forward. Generally it is held that if a feasibility study is undertaken there will be subsequent actual action taken on the recommendations. That is, if the money is spent on the study there will be further money and action to rebuild or renovate the school.

And that brings us to the present day with one notable omission. Since I wrote about the Thompson Elementary School last October, it has come to my attention that there are asbestos tiles in the building, some of which are broken and exposed. And it is these sort of revelations that build up and get parents of children in the school angry. Indeed, there are some parents who were told the school would be rebuilt during their children’s time there and those same children are now in high school.

Meg Moloney and Hilary Rappaport have been very involved in the process outlined above over the years. But they are not satisfied with the state of the school today and they let the school committee know it. They are both fully aware of the potential of the upcoming MSBA board meeting, but they have lost their patience. Those are very recent developments and this is a long term problem.

Meg had a sign and a role of duct tape with her. She opened with a strong statement of frustration.

I’ll begin by saying that I believe the Thompson School is unsafe. The facility needs to be fixed or closed. The town of Arlington has decided to continue a wait and see policy and has frozen capital planning funds for Thompson and the school committee has allowed this to happen. Basic maintenance has been put off year after year and the building continues to deteriorate. Rather than continuing to allocate money for the upkeep of a public building, they prefer to stop and wait. Wait for what?

She goes on to talk about problems with security, heating, the asbestos tiles and then, in the most dramatic moment, she holds up the duct tape and continues.

Duct tape covers the gap to the outdoors between a heating unit and the gymnasium wall. This repair was actually completed by a parent who’s wife sits in the audience. …  Are we going to wait for support? While neighboring schools honorably fundraise for their school communities and the Arlington school committee gives unanimous resolutions for such projects, Thompson parents are worrying about the health, safety and educational equity of their children and repairing their school with duct tape [slams duct tape on table and points to sign in audience] that you won’t pay for with the $120,000.

Note: I was told on 3/24/2009 that the repair was actually done by a parent who was there serving as the long-term substitute for the gym teacher -Dave

She goes on to talk about the other problems and then tells the school committee that the parents of Thompson School students need the support of the school committee and that it is their responsibility to make sure the inequities she has cataloged are fixed. She then returned to her seat where she held up a sign listing the amount of money the city had allocated to the Thompson School for maintenance and then frozen: $120,000.

I have seen first-hand many of the problems Meg lists. And if you need a further example, consider this. The Kids Care after school program in the Thompson Elementary School is run by the Arlington Boys and Girls club in a vacant classroom. The metal door to the room started to split apart last fall. What was the solution?

Hilary Rappaport spoke next. Rather than complain directly about the condition of the school, she came with a proposal. There are five rebuilt elementary schools in Arlington. Her proposal was to rotate all of the students in elementary grades through all of the schools.

Children go to elementary school for six years, so I suggest that we rotate. And all school children in Arlington be guaranteed five years in a safe, rebuilt school and all have one year in one of the other schools.

What, [applause] What possible reason could, could people give for saying no to this? Well one can’t say that the parents in the rebuilt schools paid more and therefore deserve their schools. The simple fact is the rebuilt schools were paid for by everyone in Arlington, including the Stratton and Thompson parents. These parents received nothing for their money.

She went on to dismiss any number of objections to her plan and then tapped into a very powerful emotion in East Arlington: the risks that she and Meg Moloney are talking about are not theoretical:

Will it take a tragedy in Arlington – a fire, or a collapsing roof – before all of us, parents with children in the Hardy, Bishop, Dallin, Brackett, Pierce schools as well as parents with older children and younger children and even people with no children in the schools come together to protect and enrich all of Arlington’s students?

People in the Thompson Elementary School catchment are tired of having city officials tell them to wait and respect the process that has been ongoing for 11 years now when those same officials may not be personally impacted by the condition of the Thompson Elementary School.

When I am told that we should not pay for a new roof but wait to see if the state will pay for it, I know it is unlikely that the person saying that has any chance of their child being under that roof five times a week. If everyone in Arlington had had to face this risk, I believe the Thompson roof would have been repaired by now.

We love our school community at Thompson and we will continue to dedicate ourselves to it. We have been very patient, but the time for patience is over.

And she may have a point. Would the mayor, or the treasurer or any other high ranking official stand by while their six year old child attended a school with exposed asbestos tiles, played in a gymnasium with a structurally failed roof, walked past a teachers lounge that had a fire last fall that was not detected by a fire alarm system and enter school through doors that do not lock properly? Meg and Hilary do not seem happy to be in this position of advocacy, but they have been pushed to the brink by years of inaction.

The chair of the school committee, Denise Burns, was not present for these speeches. She arrived well after this part of the meeting. However, three members of the school committee did speak to the issue: Ron Spangler (secretary), Joesph Curro, Jr. and Joseph Curran (vice-chair). I should point out that some of these school committee members, particularly Ron Spangler, Joseph Curro, Jr. and Jeff Theilman, have been actively engaged in trying to work within the system to get the Thompson fixed. I mention that because the school committee responses to Meg and Hilary were not very comforting. Ron Spangler spoke first, explaining that this issue was part of why he got involved in the school committee in the first place.

The first time I was ever in this room was two and a half years ago and I sat in essentially the same chair Mrs. Moloney sat in, as a Stratton parent, and said a lot of the same things. It’s understandable to me that you all are upset. It’s discouraging personally to be now the enemy, or one of the enemy, when, when I and others on this committee have worked for, for many, many years to try and get this project moving forward.

Unfortunately, he went on to advise a wait and see posture. Meg and Hilary can only hope his talk of a vote in the spring of next year was a mistake and that he really meant this spring.

And this October, as Sue Maserella will, will understand, with the activities going on at the state level, and some of the activities of the capital planning committee to find other money, it became clear that we were ready to develop that long term plan and maybe get shovels in the ground this year or next year on major projects and so it was felt that we needed to conserve the money we have for the major projects. I understand what that sounds like. I understand why that makes you upset. But we really are trying to conserve that $3M of capital money for a project that town meeting could vote on in the spring of next year.

As he closed his remarks, Ron Spangler seemed to be asking people not to get too upset.

There are a lot of good things happening and there’s been a lot of attention and it would be helpful and personally, [awkward pause] just helpful and useful if we could all assume goodwill on the part of everyone in town and, ah, that everyone is trying to move this forward as quickly as possible.

Joseph Curro, Jr. spoke next and, interestingly, validated the concerns of the parents about the safety of the school.

And frankly, I think, even though he and I are both Stratton parents, I think we and I think most of the committee and the community understand it’s Thompson has to be our our priority. A number of us, over, over time a number of us have come down, but I think most of us have been through the school. Three of us came down on, just this past Friday. We went through and had a tour. I agree. The situation is very serious. When, when I see no smoke alarms in a building I get very concerned and, and, and, certainly a lot of the things Mrs. Moloney mentions rings true.

He then asks for people to rally around the MSBA meeting at the end of March, although his optimism has to be corrected by Ron Spangler.

Their, they did, I thought had it, has this on their agenda for consideration, the Thompson School to, to consider the application and Ron can correct me if I’m wrong.

[Spangler] We don’t know if it is.

What’s that?

[Spangler] It may be on the agenda.

It may be on the agenda. And so if, if we get wind and I hope that the representatives here, that we will also see a turnout like this for, for, for that meeting as well because it’s very, very important. But understand this committee it, you know, we are allies. We also work with other parts of the town to push this forward and I don’t think you’ll find a member here who doesn’t understand the seriousness. But thank you for coming and keeping it alive for us and the rest of the community because it can’t be forgotten.

Now both Joseph Curro, Jr. and Ron Spangler have been at the school recently and Ron has put in a lot of time trying to figure out how to work with the state to advance the rebuild project. Unfortunately for both of them, Joseph Curran, who is the vice-chair of the committee, provides a perfect illustration of why parents are upset in his response:

OK, thank you all for, for your thoughts and I’m sure, like Mr. Curro says, we’re doing everything that, that we can as well. We all have children and we’ve all been through the rebuild process. I’ve had my kids travel from school to school – which isn’t a bad experience – they made (sic) a lot of good people. [laughs] I thought it was great. They liked it, so, they got a bus ride too. But, ah, we’re, we’re hoping things will go the right way. It would be, ah, if, if there was the money and time to do it right now I don’t think there’s a person here that would go against you, so. Having to move on, but thank you very much…

It’s easy to see why Thompson parents are upset. Mr. Curran was clearly thrilled to have his children’s school rebuilt, even touting the advantages of the relocation process and laughing. But he was very careless in what he said and it came off as insulting and dismissive. His first claim that, “we’ve all been through the rebuild process,” is untrue. Both Joseph Curro, Jr. and Ron Spangler live in the Stratton catchment. They have not been through the rebuild process. Then, after making light of it, he says, “if there was the money and time to do it right now…” (emphasis mine). Is he seriously implying that time is an issue?

Unfortunately for the school committee, parents like Meg and Hilary are unlikely to be placated by this kind of response. Quite the opposite and I have no doubt that this issue is going to come up again and again until it is addressed in a more constructive way. And in a final bout of irony, consider this: an entire wall in the school committee chamber contained artwork drawn by Thompson Elementary School Students.

Note: I am the parent of a Thompson School student. I have tried to be fair, but I make no claim to be completely unbiased. Any opinions aside from direct quotes are mine.