Akron North High students, staff fight for building to be replaced
Floor boards that are warped from water damage. Classrooms that are either 55 degrees or 85 degrees. Ceilings that leak, and in some cases, partially collapse into classrooms around students trying to learn.
The conditions at North High School were abysmal, students and staff told the school board Monday, begging the board not to delay the replacement of their building or hinge the project on the passage of a levy.
“Somehow, North went from being a certainty to a possibility, and other groups’ want to take precedence over our basic needs,” Janice Weaver, an academy principal at North, said during public comment. “Once again, North’s 1,000 combined students and staff are being left behind, and we risk continuing to miss out on the equity that the rest of the district receives.”
North is the latest neighborhood or school community to pack a board meeting in recent weeks to advocate for its place in the district’s long-term facilities plan that is still awaiting a board vote.
The plan currently up for review calls for North High to be replaced, but in the second phase of the plan, and not before the passage of a permanent improvement levy to pay off the debt the district would incur from construction. The $80 million project, plus interest, would cost the district $5 million a year in debt payments for 30 years. The earliest the new school would open would be 2028.
The first phase would build a new school in the Kenmore neighborhood that would require taking on much less debt, but uses existing one-time funding sources like federal stimulus money.
Education news:Akron Public Schools facilities plan would require a levy, diversion of stimulus funds
Why the rush?Akron Public Schools faces tight timeline to make decisions on new buildings
But North stakeholders on Monday pressed the board not to push North down the line and not to depend on the passage of a levy.
Weaver said he was not optimistic the city would support a levy, especially since it would most likely be on top of an operating levy.
“An operating levy is inevitable, but North’s inclusion in it isn’t,” she said. “What are our contingency plans for North if it doesn’t pass?”
North High School staff, students describe crumbling building
Staff and students described miserable conditions in the building, with fears of health and safety implications.
North counselor Brian Caperones described the collapse of part of a ceiling in a classroom.
“It came down right next to the student’s desk,” he said. “They could see through to the classroom above.”
The ceiling is known to have asbestos, Caperones said, and frequently crumbles. Access to the building does not go through the main office, so a visitor who gets through the front door has immediate access to the rest of the building.
About seven years ago, he said, he took a North student to visit Buchtel Community Learning Center and he was amazed at the difference between his crumbling school and the shiny new one.
“She turned to me and went, ‘I can’t believe this is where you can go to school,'” he said. “What do I say to her? I have nothing I can say.”
Teacher Alma Kryah-Deblasio said the fire marshal had warned them about plugging in extension cords. But without one, she can’t use a projector in her classroom because there are so few outlets.
Students often don’t complain, she said, as many of them come from countries where they have little to no access to technology or an education.
But they are freezing cold in one classroom and boiling in another, she said. Their bathrooms often have plumbing issues, and for a while, some stalls were missing doors.
“We talk about equity in the classroom, but what is said and what is done are two different things,” she said.
Related reading:New schools in North, Kenmore? Closing elementary schools? Akron district considers options
If the district doesn’t immediately start to build a new North High, it will have to spend an estimated $15 million to make repairs to the roof and heating systems that could cause a domino effect of problems to solve once walls are opened.
North junior Frozan Azimi invited the board members to come tour the school and see the problems for themselves.
“Please put North first,” Azimi said. “We don’t have much time left.”
Dev Bhujel, a North sophomore, said the issues are “not just inconveniences.”
“They are real problems that have a significant impact on the learning environment and the health and the safety of our students,” Bhujel said.
As a Nepali refugee, he said many families like his in the heavily immigrant North Hill community do not speak English, or may not feel comfortable speaking out like other communities in order to advocate for what they need.
“Other schools are able to make our voices heard, but not our school,” he said.
So far, board meetings have drawn crowds from several other schools involved in various iterations of the facilities plan.
More:Parents rally in support of Akron’s STEM middle school, Leggett Elementary
A win for civic engagement:Students from Leggett begged Akron’s school board not to close their building. It worked.
Groups rallied for Kenmore, Miller South, STEM Middle schools
Two specialty schools, the Miller South School for Visual and Performing Arts and the National Inventors Hall of Fame STEM Middle School, have had strong showings at meetings. Representatives from the Kenmore neighborhood have advocated for a new school to be built there, possibly to hold Miller South and an elementary school in Kenmore that is also in need of a new building.
STEM Middle is trying to hold on to its building, as some versions of the plan propose uprooting the school to make a new home for NIHF STEM High school, which will soon lose its space at the University of Akron.
One of the places STEM Middle could have ended up was the Leggett CLC building, which holds an elementary school, but Leggett parents, staff and students spoke out and convinced the board to leave them out of the plan.
But North, which operates in a school that’s nearly 100 years old, was the only high school not to be rebuilt when the district and the city partnered with the state to rebuild more than 30 of Akron’s schools and turn them into community learning centers over the last 15 years. The North cluster of schools is also the only one in the district to show growth over the last five years, with its elementary schools already overcrowded.
Board President Derrick Hall, a North High graduate, said Monday following public comments that the board had not yet made any decisions but noted that ultimately, someone will not be happy.
“We have multiple things that need to be done, and there are limited and finite resources,” he said.
The board did not otherwise discuss the plan Monday night, and a timeline for a vote is unclear.
Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.