Suppose I built a house and lived in it for 50 years. At the end of that time, the house is falling apart. The roof is about to fall in, the plaster is cracking, there’s lots of water damage, and it’s in jeopardy of being condemned by the city. What would you think of me as a homeowner? Well, it would be clear that I had done very little maintenance, if any. That’s a given. You’d then probably speculate as to why I didn’t — am I poor? indifferent? irresponsible?

Yet, no one ever asks these questions when school districts do the same thing. When District 150 wants to borrow money to build a new school to replace Harrison, or when they want to close Irving school, the reason we’re given is the deplorable shape those buildings are in. Now Dee Mack is getting in on the action:

The Deer Creek-Mackinaw school district is asking voters to approve a referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot for a $5.4 million project that includes renovation of the 92-year-old high school building in Mackinaw. […]

[Superintendent Steve] Yarnall said the need for the referendum has been generated by several factors, including the age and code violations of the building, increased maintenance and energy costs, lack of current technology and student growth. […]

He added that the building has water damage and was not built to support technology nor does it meet the accessibility standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I realize there are other factors at play here, but I’d like to focus on the maintenance issue here. Other news reports have school officials quoted saying the roof is about to fall in and that they’re in danger of the state board of education declaring the facility unfit for students.

So, the question that pops to my mind, but is never asked by the media, is, “why?” How did the school building sink to this deplorable state? Who’s responsible for deferring the maintenance so much that the roof is about to fall in? What policies and procedures are being put in place to ensure that the next building they get doesn’t get run down, too?

Not to be cynical, but do they defer maintenance on purpose in order to make the need for a tax increase to build a new school more urgent in the minds of taxpayers? Because, ultimately, that’s how this referendum will be framed: do the taxpayers care enough about the children of their community to get them out of that dump of a school they’re in now. Yet, the question should be, why has the school board allowed their property to get so run down that it’s endangering their students? Someone should be held accountable for that.