Public school is kind of like a prison.
You spend hours sitting in enclosed rooms with fluorescent lighting, you need permission to go to the bathroom and an annoying, high-pitched bell tells you when you can go and leave.
But does a public school building have to look like a prison? In some parts of New Jersey, they do.
This is a photograph of a hallway in Trenton Central High School. The walls are chipped and yellowing and the ceiling is filthy (literally, this picture is disgusting. we feel like scrubbing the computer screen with a toothbrush just looking at it).
Local photographer Andrew Wilson was hired by New Jersey Healthy Schools Now to photograph some of the state’s most depredated schools. The collection is called “A Blind Eye: The Immorality of Inaction.” Other schools profiled have missing ceiling panels, mouse droppings, uncovered pipes and classroom temperatures of 80 degrees.
The educational advocates hoped to reach recently re-elected governor Chris Christie. He had been criticized in the past for a lack of attention towards renovating and renewing New Jersey’s at-risk public schools.
The New Jersey School Development Authority is charged with financing and running construction projects for the needy schools in the state. However, it …
“has been moving at a snail’s pace in recent years, leaving schools’ conditions to weaken and kids’ educations to suffer.”
According to Moriah Kinberg, a member of Healthy Schools Now,
Allowing teachers and students to be in this condition is a moral issue. I’ve heard from teachers who say [school] conditions are making them physically ill. It’s really demoralizing to go to school when you walk into the hallway and there’s water running down the hall.
This isn’t just a problem in New Jersey.
It seems everywhere some schools receive adequate funding for athletics and after-school enrichment opportunities…
While others in the same district can’t get the holes in their walls fixed.
Is the system rigged?
Or does it sometimes seem like urban schools just don’t matter?
