Nate Monroe: Building public schools on the cheap isn’t the answer

COMMENTARY | Public school buildings in Florida must meet excellent minimum standards, and those standards cost money but ensure safety and uniformity across the state's diverse communities regardless of wealth or race.

These high minimum standards are a strength of the state's system, but opponents of public education have found a clever way to undermine this virtue. The ever-wise state Legislature in 2018 passed a law that allows public school districts to choose to ignore those high minimum standards and instead build schools down to the run-of-the-mill building code just as charter schools can do -- all done cloaked in the rationale of "cost savings."

In Jacksonville, the powers that be are now pressuring the Duval County School system to take advantage of this law. It's yet another road block facing the School Board as it fights for a half-cent sales tax to pay for a major renovation and rebuilding effort of the system's aging facilities -- which include some of the oldest academic buildings in Florida.

The Civic Council -- a group of wealthy, mostly white donor-types and civic leaders -- have said their support for the School Board's proposal in part depends on whether it will take advantage of this new law and build new schools that majorly depart from these traditional minimum standards. Never mind whether these oligarchs would ever send their children to schools that lacked adequate security lighting, or covered walkways, or well-maintained athletic fields. This is simply a bad idea.

All it would accomplish is ensuring most of the schools in need of renovations or rebuilding -- which are located in impoverished, predominantly black parts of the city -- are built to lower standards than higher-quality, newer schools in wealthier areas. It would sharply bifurcate schools along lines of race and wealth more than they already are.

It would amount to a violation of the Florida Constitution's guarantee that every citizen has access to a uniform and quality free public education system, and it would be another stain on a city that has too often looked upon its black neighborhoods with miserly cruelty.

COMMUNITY ASSETS

There is a misconception that these minimum standards -- called the State Requirements for Educational Facilities -- are primarily in place for the purpose of ensuring public schools can be used as hurricane shelters. Indeed, the vast majority of hurricane shelters in Duval County are public schools, so it's a good thing these requirements have been in place for decades.

But the logic from opponents of the School Board's sales tax proposal is at first glance compelling: "Not every public school needs to be a hurricane shelter."

Accept that argument as true. It still won't save much money.

Building to hurricane-shelter standards only adds about 3-7 percent to construction costs, according to a 2017 study by an auditing and policy-analysis arm of the Florida Legislature, called the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability.

Back in those halcyon days of public education, two years ago, the Legislature's auditing office "did not identify a compelling reason to eliminate" the public-school building standards.

"The (standards) provides a broad range of benefits in terms of student safety, facility quality, facility longevity, and school uniformity," the office concluded in its 2017 report. "In addition, there is a general lack of support among school districts for eliminating (the) requirements."

The fact is, the State Requirements for Educational Facilities speak to far more than building to hurricane-shelter standards. It's a huge set of rules that govern minute aspects of public-school construction: When security lighting is needed, how big high-school parking lots must be, how to prevent schools from overloading their lighting and power panels, where kindergartners should access their fenced-in play areas, and when the school district must contract with licensed professionals for maintenance repairs.

The 2017 legislative policy study stretched to find ways the building standards could change and only came up with 10 suggestions, with a major caveat: "However, these modifications would result in minimal cost savings and each has potential drawbacks."

The Civic Council claimed the School Board could save, "at minimum," $600 million by ignoring some of these building standards. To achieve that cost savings, it's clear the board would have to depart from major aspects of the code, and do so at the cost of safety and quality. That is unacceptable.

Before its latest mutation into a fiefdom run by an unqualified charter zealot, the State Board of Education heartily agreed with the legislative auditors, arguing the standards are "necessary to protect the health, safety and welfare of students and other occupants, ensure equity among educational facilities in a diverse state, promote an environment that is conducive to high academic achievement and protect taxpayers' long-term investment in community facilities," the former education commissioner wrote.

"Florida public schools enjoy a reputation as safe places and are regarded as community assets," she said.

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

Charter schools don't need to comply with these regulations. This is a weakness of the charter system, which bills itself as competition to traditional public schools. In an effort to lift charters, however, their local champions are demanding the School Board play down to its competition. This would be a mistake.

Fortunately, the School Board has been leery of rushing to adopt the Civic Council's recommendation. At a recent community meeting, Board member Ashley Smith Juarez reasonably wondered what kind of liability would fall on the school system if it adopts crummier standards, then is faced with a safety issue at one of those schools, according to notes of that meeting from my colleague, education reporter Emily Bloch.

Remember this: The Florida Department of Law Enforcement slapped a Broward Sheriff's Office school resource officer with 11 criminal charges for failing to take action to protect Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students during the 2018 mass shooting. People don't have a sense of humor about the safety of their children. Board members might feel a tad reluctant to deviate from building standards that experts have told them best guarantees quality and safety, regardless of what some barons on the Civic Council tell them.

Smith Juarez also speculated that insurance costs could increase if some of those requirements were waived. Also not included in the Civic Council's analysis is that while building cheap might save money on the front end, it might cost more in the long run to maintain these buildings.

"I just think when we look at these things that the cost benefit is not worth the risk," she said.

City Councilman Rory Diamond recently noted nearly half of the proceeds of the School Board's proposed sales tax would go to districts that cover most of Northwest and West Jacksonville, while a much smaller share would go to the area that includes his council district, which includes the three Beaches cities.

It was quickly pointed out to Diamond that this was done by design: The money goes where the most needs are, and most of the needs simply aren't at the Beaches. They are in urban areas around the city's core. The School Board simply can't justify renovating and rebuilding those schools to lower standards based on the patrician whims of Jacksonville's aristocracy.

Superintendent Diana Greene -- who has been a far better sport in the face of constant insults, disrespect and undermining than she gets credit for -- has said the district will take a look at those building standards and, when appropriate, make an effort to save money on design and construction. "There's moments that we will take advantage of this law and moments that we won't," she said.

That is a reasonable position. The School Board must tread cautiously in diverging from the high standards expected of public schools only for the sake of cheapness. A community's investment in the quality of its school system mirrors the hopes and ambitions it has for the students who will come out of it.

That's an important thing to remember -- because there is an old adage that often turns out to be true: You get what you pay for.

Nate Monroe's City column appears every Thursday and [email protected], (904) 359-4289

___

(c)2019 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Fla.)

Visit The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Fla.) at www.jacksonville.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.