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Building new is very alluring but...

RIDE identified $194 million needed for all our schools. SMMA was about $220 (once the closed buildings were subtracted).

So we want to build one new school for, say 1100 students? OK, that's $100 mllion. And 1100 students and teachers get state of the art stuff.

Now throughut the rest of our fine city there are another 7500 students and their teachers who are in inadequate classrooms that date from the 1980's. Where do we get the money to modernize their classrooms? Or do the inequities that so many say have persisted for the last 30 years just continue for the roughly 80% of our students not fortunate enough to be in the new school? Oh, many will volunteer to tell Mr. & Mrs. Smith that they're kids will attend the bright, shiny new school. I wonder who will volunteer to tell Mr. & Mrs. Jones that thier kids will have to go to their current school that has had little to no improvements for the last 25 years Sorry, I can't buy into that scenario. it's not fair to our students, teachers, and our community.

Our buildings are nowhere near the condition of North Providence's Stephen Olney & and James L. McGuire Elementary Schools where that city is speding $75 million in total (w/ a 56% RIDE reimbursement vs. our 38%) to build two new elementarys (housing a total of 550 students) and make other improvements in their district. They have 3500 total students. We have 2.5X that amount. Lincoln, who just remodeled - not getting new - their high school (1000 students) to the tune of about $60 million. The have one high school so ALL their high school students benefit, unlike our one school proposal which will benefit maybe 40% of our high school students).

New would be nice, but we need to invest in what we have now so that we can buy 20 or so more years from them (and we can) so in that interim we can start dicussing new. Also equating improving buldings to keeping an old car running is an overly simplistic and inadequate comparison, in my opinion. Vehicles and buildings are not similar.

David Testa