Modern School Construction and Costs
In the meantime the erection of buildings with shops, auditoriums, laboratories, kitchens, and gymnasiums has given rise to new and urgent problems. First, the cost of these new buildings is great, and many school boards are driven to ask whether the community can afford to erect them. The superintendent of schools of New York City recently reported to the Board of Education of that city that a building program would have to be adopted which would cost the city $40,000,000 in a period of five years. In order to provide buildings many cities have been obliged to issue bonds which will fall, in the years to come, as a financial burden on the generation which is being educated in the buildings.
The urgency of these financial problems is aggravated by the fact that in many school systems the elaborate buildings are not used to the full extent of their capacity. Indeed, it comes to be a most interesting economic and educational problem to inquire what is the capacity of one of these buildings. For example, what does an auditorium represent in the way of actual enlargement of the school plant? Is it merely a place in which the school may come together for a general exercise once a week, or should it be used every day? If it is used for twenty minutes or half an hour every morning, should it be closed during the remainder of the day? As a matter of public economy should it be made available to adults at hours when it is not needed for school purposes, as, for example, in the evening or in the late afternoon?
Such questions as the foregoing multiply with every new addition to the buildings. The old buildings equipped only for study and recitations were economical in the extreme; the new buildings are often lavish.