It may be a new school year, but students and teachers at Brooklyn High School are dealing with the same old problems.
Their aging building is in need of repairs, but the school district’s superintendent said Thursday the money to fix them isn’t there.
Pictures snapped inside the building earlier this month showed mops and buckets with dirty brown water in hallways and classrooms, along with ceiling tiles stained from a leaky roof.
“They’re horrible. I don’t think children should have to go to a school that has buckets of water laying around,” grandparent Chris McGann said. “If water’s in the buckets, it could also be on the floor and they haven’t spotted it yet, so absolutely it could be a safety issue.”
But Brooklyn City Schools Superintendent Mark Gleichauf said the issues were mostly cosmetic. Still, he said, there is a plan to fix it, if taxpayers will approve.
“There’s no health or safety concerns,” Gleichauf said. “We’ve got a permanent improvement levy coming up in November.”
Gleichauf wants voters to approve an existing 1.0 mill levy on property taxes with an additional half mill increase, equaling roughly $17.50 per $100,000 of assessed home value. That money could only be used for permanent improvements, like fixing the roof, which he said, could cost more than $1 million.
The same levy failed in May.
“It’s hard to say, might just be the time of year, but we’re hoping it will be successful now,” Gleichauf said.
The roughly 60-year-old building also lacks modern heating and cooling systems. Grandparent Tim Thomas is worried the levy will fail again.
“They have an aging population and like my mother said, ‘Why should I vote for a levy when I don’t have kids in school anymore?’ But you have to keep it going for those who come up after us, otherwise no one wants to live here.”
If passed, Gleichauf said it would be the first levy increase since the 1970s.
