When he was a student at Simeon High School back in the mid-1970s, Ronald Harris figured it was only a matter of time, maybe a year or two, before he and his classmates got the new school the Board of Education had promised. The existing building, at 82nd and Vincennes, had a leaky roof, peeling paint, crumbling walls, and lots of mildew. “This was a converted factory–it was never supposed to be a permanent school,” says Harris. “I figured if our class didn’t get the new school, then it would be a class right after us.”
It gets hot because there’s no proper ventilation in the building, and there’s no proper ventilation because the ventilation system routinely breaks down. It breaks down because the roof leaks on it, and the roof leaks because, well, it’s been leaking since the school opened. “That’s probably the single biggest problem we have,” says Polk. “Everything starts with the leaky roof.”
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By the time parents and staffers decided to speak up it was the early 1980s and the building binge was over. The system was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and there was barely enough money to pay teachers, let alone build new schools.
In 2000 the board had a new set of building plans for Simeon drafted. They bought, then demolished several houses north of the school. Earlier this year a work crew came in and dug a large hole, apparently preparing to pour the new school’s foundation. But the hole sat empty until the summer, and then another work crew came in and filled it. The site’s now covered with gravel and used for parking. “We have the world’s largest parking lot,” says Veatrice Watson, a member of the West Chatham Improvement Association, a local community group.
Other observers remain skeptical. “It sounds good, but we’ve heard it before,” says Watson. As she notes, nothing has changed since Scott made his promise. The football teams still run in the dusty basement, mold still grows in the physics class, and rain still seeps through the walls. And the window in Marc Jeanty’s classroom still has a hole.
