Give up the fight?

There is a small group of people in this community (quietly) trying to save an 80-odd-year-old gymnasium located next to the middle school here in town. This building is in pretty bad shape and would take A LOT of money (which the district does not have) to renovate to get it simply back up to codes, let alone making it nice and shiny.

Therefore, the district has received permission from the state to use life-safety funds to re-build the functionality of the building. In other words, since the building was used as a locker room, the district can use its life-safety funding to re-build locker rooms on the middle school campus. As a result, the district can no longer, in any way, shape or form, use the building for any purpose whatsoever. It will just sit there.

Enter regional superintendent. She was asked to write a letter of condemnation to the state board of education allowing the district to use funds to knock down the current building. She stalled and stalled, eventually only sending in a two-line letter saying she wasn’t going to give her permission. She says it’s because the district could have done more to preserve the building in the past.

That all touched off a slight uproar in the community, of people wanting to save the building. That’s all well and good, if the building weren’t about 100 feet from the school building. That means there is NO WAY, from a liability standpoint, that the district can legally share use of the building with the community at large. It’s just too much of a potential problem for them to incur.

While this has been explained over and over again, there is still a small group fighting for this building. Now, I’m all for community activism, but community activism with a potential return. There’s no point in fighting for something if it’s never going to happen.

What’s even worse, though, is the fact that the person spearheading the campaign is employed by a newspaper in a town about 50 miles away. He’s the correspondent for this county to that newspaper. That means he covers school board issues in that newspaper. That creates a conflict of interest, especially when he writes letters to the editor in a local weekly newspaper on this issue and, as he just did, speak at the school board meeting while he’s technically covering it for the newspaper.

Again, I’m all for saving historic buildings and this one’s pretty cool from the outside (the inside’s pretty bad), but not at the cost of compromising journalistic integrity.

UPDATE: One of the board members mentioned — for the umpteenth time since I took over the beat — that this building was slated for demolition nearly 10 years ago and, up until a few months ago, no one had come forward with a workable solution. He referenced window replacements in a 50-year-old junior high building this summer, saying he would much rather see district money put into buildings which are still being used by students than go toward buildings which are not used and cannot be used for their intended purposes.

The board is currently (at 9:27 p.m.) in executive session to discuss real estate sale or purchase. This could (not likely, though) relate to this particular building. I will update this if anything happens.

UPDATE 2 (6/10/08, 7:15 p.m.): The assistant superintendent told me today that the district will form a task force (headed by previously-mentioned correspondent) for the purpose of “finding a use and the financial support for that use” of the old gym. The committee will have six months to come up with a solution, if there’s one out there.