2 ways to fix Stamford schools crisis
BEN LEE | Opinion piece published in the Stamford Advocate
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
The crisis at Toquam Magnet School is a perfect example of the larger crisis playing out across the entire Stamford Public School system.
Toquam is a brilliant magnet school, with excellent teachers and wonderful, diverse students from around the city. But we have been letting these teachers and students down by failing to properly maintain the building. I’ve personally inspected Toquam as part of a tour of SPS facilities to see our infrastructure issues firsthand. Toquam teachers and students have improvised for years in offices that were adapted into classrooms, and with heating and cooling systems that have been pushed long past their usable lifespan.
We clearly are not setting our teachers and students up for success when we send them into humid, poorly ventilated classrooms. School should be a place of learning and exploration, not muddling through and getting by.
This situation is unacceptable. But to be clear, the problem is not simply some individual failure. Toquam is built into the side of a hill. Half of the school is literally underground. The engineering challenges of maintaining airflow and fighting against water intrusion in a neighborhood named Glenbrook – home to a large aquifer – have been obvious since the day the school was built. The failures at Toquam were years in the making and systemic.
To fix this kind of systemic problem, we need to do two things.
Clearly state our values – and then live them. Our teachers and children deserve to teach and learn in clean, healthy environments. We must do whatever we have to do to make that happen.
Fix the broken processes that led to this crisis. The current Board of Education struggles to pass an operating budget. This dysfunction must end, and a new Board of Education must take responsibility for seeing the budget process all the way through to make sure the right resources get to our teachers and students.
Naturally, the cynics will rush to say that neither of these things has happened in Stamford’s recent history, that the cost of refurbishing our school system is too great, and that our political process is irrevocably broken. Indeed, the mountain of problems stretches to the sky, and so they will proclaim it can’t be climbed.
I reject that thinking. Cynicism without any determination to overcome the challenge isn’t wisdom. It’s cowardice. It’s the fear of those who never want to be wrong. I congratulate the cynics on being right and hope that gives them joy in their hearts; for myself, I’d rather take the chance of believing that we can accomplish great things.
We can do this. We can solve these problems. Maintaining proper airflow and fighting water intrusion, even in challenging environments, is simply a matter of engineering. None of these problems are new and there are proven engineering-based solutions for all of them. Solving such a problem is not simply a question of money – one must also have the discipline and good processes to spend that money wisely – but otherwise this is a straightforward matter.
Stamford is the second largest city in Connecticut and has immense resources at its disposal. We are fortunate to be an era where the federal government is again recognizing its obligation to provide infrastructure funding, and there is well-founded hope that we will soon receive our share of such funding. The state has a remarkable budget surplus under Governor Lamont and I strongly believe that there is widespread political consensus in Stamford that the school infrastructure crisis must end. Put simply, we have the resources to get this done.
A truly great school system needs dedicated, motivated teachers, staff, and administrators, and a passionate body of students and parents. We have that. Let’s give them the buildings they deserve.
Ben Lee is a current member of the Board of Representatives and is running for the Board of Education as an endorsed Democratic candidate. More information about Ben can be found at benleeboe.com and @benleeboe on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.