Maintenance Matters

This makes me mad. In a country as wealthy as ours, shouldn't teachers be able to expect that, when some basic part of the physical infrastructure of their classroom is broken, it will be fixed so that it works properly, in a timely fashion, and with the minimal possible disruption to the classroom? What other professions put up with this idiocy? Of course, I live in D.C., where 30 schools lacked heat in at least some rooms during the past frigid week, and some school buildings had to be closed several days because of lack of heat. Is it any wonder some people support the Mayor's bid to take over? Education is complicated. Improving low-performing schools is very difficult. By comparison, maintaining facilities should be simple. If our school systems can't even handle such basic functions that tons of property management companies in every major city carry out competently on a daily basis, how the h@#$ do we expect them to meet the much more demanding and complex challenges of raising student achievement?