30 June 2014

Kalispell has enough classrooms — it doesn’t need new schools

Kalispell school officials claim that more elementary — and possibly middle — school classrooms are needed, and that new schools must be built.

Nonsense. Plenty of classroom space exists. It just isn’t being used because schools like bankers’ hours and think schools should operate only five days a week and nine months a year.

That’s right. Two days a week, several hours a day, and at least two months a year, all classroom space is empty.

Before buying more land, building more schools, and raising taxes yet again, let’s start teaching on Saturdays and running schools during the summer. Sure, some adjustments would be required; more teachers would have to be hired. But that’s a lot more efficient use of public resources than brick-and-mortar solutions that gobble money and perpetuate the bad habit of not using space that’s already available.

Who would object?

• The teachers’ unions? Would teachers subordinate a community’s educational imperatives to their own convenience and self-interest?


• Real estate owners and brokers? Construction companies? Probably. No new school, no new profits. But why should taxes be raised to pad the wallets of salesmen and builders?


• Parents? Unfortunately, some might — principally the Parents Who Are Professionals (PWAPs, pronounced Pee-waahps). PWAPs have the money to send their children to Europe or language or music or art camps in the summer, so they’re just fine with a school schedule based on a Nineteenth Century need to free students to work on the family farm during the summer. So the sons and daughters of PWAPs actually study year around, while the children of Working Joes and Jills (WJJs) attend school during fall, winter, and spring, and during the summer flip burgers at a fast food joint and sometimes kill themselves driving too fast down main street on Saturday night. I think WJJs might welcome more schooling for their children.

Instead of thinking about building more big boxes that won’t be used efficiently, our school board members and administrators need to start thinking out of the box, to punch their way out of the paper bag of Nineteenth Century educational practice and culture that’s blinding them to the unused classroom resource right in front of their eyes.