Imagine for a moment what our children think of decisions like that of the administrators who recently recommended a build-new option for the Park Forest Middle School rehabilitation. Young people know the world is in deep climate crisis, and yet their elders are selling us on a plan that eliminates the daily joy of families walking to and from school; that unnecessarily adds traffic congestion and pollution to neighborhoods twice daily; that destroys trees and wildlife — all for a bottom line that is more expensive than simply renovating the current school building.
According to coverage in our local press, we are being pushed to accept the currently favored option of destroying a natural site off Valley Vista Drive instead of renovating the existing PF school building. The recommendation is based on the stated premise that the destroy-and-build-new option has the fewest challenges. Here are the challenges that are underplayed in the current “recommendation”:
- There will be no more walking allowed to this new-build school. Everyone must be bused or driven with the Valley Vista new building option. Is this not astonishing? Instead of daily family walks, there will be more buses and traffic congestion and pollution twice a day.
- A beautiful stand of carbon-capturing trees and community-access tennis courts will be destroyed. The soccer field at the proposed site will become a parking lot. This unnecessary degradation of nature adjacent to a local park (Circleville) is being justified to us as an opportunity to collaborate with Parks and Rec. Collaborate in climate destruction and pollution and fewer free open spaces for sport? Circleville hosts a healthy population of walkers, bikers, tennis players and gleeful families of sledders in winter. All of this recreation will be disrupted and even eliminated if the build-new option is carried out.
- Build-new plans are more expensive than the renovate option. Yup, the recommended option to destroy a natural site and then build from scratch has a higher monetary cost alongside its destructive side effects. We are told that this new build is ultimately more efficient because contractors and “the market” don’t like to renovate as much as they like to build from scratch (see StateCollege.com article from March 12). Little wonder. But we must ask ourselves: should this decision be led by contractor preferences, or instead by considerations of our children’s best future interests? If the school board thinks our taxpaying community has $89-100 million to spend on the new-build option, perhaps we should choose instead to use some of that money to pay our teachers more and degrade our local wildlife and parks less.
Let’s renovate and innovate — let’s not destroy natural sites when we could keep our current building site and let the kids keep on walking.
Fight back for the kids, for their future, and for our walkable neighborhood school and community park. Please. Write to our school board. Show up to every forum and voice your concerns and preferences.
The next meeting for a vote by the school board to approve the current new-build recommendation is at 7 p.m. on March 25 at Panorama Village Administrative Center.
Steering Committee Meeting: 6 p.m. on April 18 at Park Forest Middle School.
Community Forums: 6 p.m., April 24 at Gray’s Woods Elementary School; 6 p.m., April 29 at Park Forest Middle School.
Please show up — for the kids, for their future and for our community.
Judith McKelvey and Jacy Marshall-McKelvey
Patton Township
