This week, we’re featuring two of Joe Spendolini’s videos. The first, which is fairly short and why we’re opting for two, is about the extensive water damage in the ceiling tiles at Brixner Jr. High School. Built in 1972, Brixner provides a learning environment for 350 students. However, as you see in the video, though Brixner is one of the newer schools in the Klamath County School District, it is in dire need of roof repair and an updated fire alarm system.
The next video is about the Klamath County School District’s largest elementary school, Peterson Elementary. In this video, Mr. Spendolini is given a tour of Peterson by principal Jennifer Hawkins and district superintendant Greg Thede. Peterson Elementary serves nearly 600 students, and when you include the 50+ staff, over 650 people work and learn in this building. However, to accommodate these people, there are only two sets of bathrooms in the whole building. To make matters worse – there are only two to three stalls in each restroom. So, for nearly 650 people, there are at most 12 “stalls”. Also be sure to notice the difference between the digitally enhanced and non-digitally enhanced lighting Joe did at 1:26. And if that doesn’t grab your attention, at the 3:00 mark you’ll see the condition of the flooring that needs to be replaced.
As you can see, Peterson Elementary is in need of a lot of help. From too few bathrooms to too many flooring issues and poor lighting, the school is not the safest – or healthiest – learning environment. While some folks will argue you don’t need nice buildings in order to give children a good education, at the very least our children need a school that will be able to be lit in two years (the T-12 bulbs are being phased out nationwide) and has proper bathroom facilities.
Again, a big thanks to Mr. Spendolini and KlamathOnline.com for bring attention the condition of a few of our schools. If you’d like to see the other videos Joe put together about bond measure 18-91, please check out his page “VIDEO: Where Will The $31 Million School Bond Money Go If Passed?“. It’s a real eye-opener and does a good job showing where the funds of the Klamath County School District bond measure will go.
