Hard Times High

August 25, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

In the old days, doing nothing cost you nothing. And there was a big difference between doing nothing and doing something. Somehow, now, doing nothing costs forty-two million dollars.

I know squat about building new buildings or fixing up old buildings, about making buildings accessible to those with disabilities. So I’m a bit shocked to learn we’ll be spending forty-two to seventy million to either repair or replace Monument Mountain, our forty-year old high school.

I know a lot of people who are having a difficult time of it lately. Paying their mortgages, their rents, their real estate taxes. Quite frankly, after the new middle school, and the new police station, the new fire station, and the renovated library, I was hoping that the town fathers and mothers would find a way to begin reducing taxes. But it’s hard to imagine lowering taxes when folks are talking about forty-two million for doing nothing and seventy million for doing everything. Of course, those folks are quick to point out that the state will pick up 50% of the costs. Like the state will pay for Downtown Revitalization. But the state, unfortunately is us, so we pay one way or another.

This is probably the time to tell you I care about education and I care about kids. There was even a time when I knew a little bit about education. I was a student for many, many years and I even taught for a bit here and there. Seventh and eighth grade and college and even Graduate School for a summer. So let me repeat myself: I believe in education, in teaching and in learning.

But there is also no point in pretending I’m not suffering severe sticker shock. And hoping beyond hope that there is a cheaper way to make sure our young people learn what they need to learn.

So I put my limited mental resources to work. And whammo, bango I woke up at three in the morning with what I think is a decent idea.

Let’s turn our schools into schools. Remember those conversations in Great Barrington and Housatonic and Stockbridge and West Stockbridge about our empty schools. The proposals floated for Searles and Bryant in Barrington, the many ideas for Housatonic.

In Barrington, Jane Iredale will be using Bryant for her corporate headquarters. But the Searles School is still empty, waiting for that great day when folks plunk down the dough for those luxury condominiums and that glorious view of the skateboard park, and the new Ye Olde New England Log Homes site.

And we’ve still got the empty Housatonic School that inspires dreams of renovation and revitalization and incubator industries. Remember when Mr. Muss promised us renewal, then his wife bought herself a mill. And wasn’t Housatonic going to be Housywood?

Anyway, back to my idea. What if we made our old schools our new old high schools? Sounds ridiculous, right? Local schools for local high school kids. Your kid wakes up on Hollenbeck, has a locally-grown, whole grain, mostly organic breakfast, because what is really organic these days, then walks to high school.

Of course, we’d have to buy back Searles. But maybe we can trade New England Log Homes for Searles and a shortstop.

Works the same way if you live on Hart Street in Housatonic.

Someone told me that Mary Flynn, an inspiration from the far distant town of Stockbridge, once said “It takes a school to make a community.”

A long time ago there were all kinds of reasons why regional schools made sense. A growing school-age population. The need for ever more new and more zippy technologies and extra-curricular activities. The need to accommodate students with special needs. When no one cared about gas and driving time because new was so much better than old.

But now with the amazing advances that are coming with fiber optics, and our new ability to zippify just about any location, even Searles, even the Housatonic School, why not save some of that projected forty-two to seventy million dollars none of us can afford?

Folks will rightly talk about the Americans for Disabilities Act. But maybe by not spending all that dough, there’s now enough to make Housatonic and Searles properly accessible.

Then there’s the undeniable fact that these are old buildings.

Well what if we make this an exercise in learning. We’ll call Searles, “Hard Times High,” the school where we use only what we absolutely need.

We’ll give every student a $79 Kindle with a thousand of the best books ever written. The best fiction, science, philosophy. And everyone has to read, talk, and write about these great books, and their great ideas.

And teachers and students and parents and our town mothers and fathers will pretend we’re living in hard times, and that we can’t really afford seventy million.

We’ll all attend Hard Times High.