Extensive wear and tear bear witness to the building’s age and many years of service. The dimly lit halls are dark and uninviting; chipped and faded floor tiles are the current standard. On the school’s top floor, trash cans are strategically placed to catch the water when it rains.

And then there are the unseen problems—the ancient heating system that always seems to break down on the coldest days, poor air circulation that has been blamed for the respiratory problems of some students and staff, and an outdated electrical infrastructure that blows a fuse when more than a handful of computers are turned on at the same time.

Sound familiar? Sadly, some or all of these conditions are commonplace in many U.S. schools, where a combination of neglect and inadequate funding have turned buildings into places unsuitable for learning and, in some cases, unfit for habitation. Our failure to do something about these conditions sends a cynical message of indifference to students and educators alike, and it calls into question our commitment as a nation to helping every child reach his or her potential.

“This is a health issue, a safety issue and an education issue,” says AFT executive vice president Antonia Cortese. “In the world’s richest nation, every child is entitled to learn in clean, well-maintained classrooms. As we try to build young minds, we also have to mind school buildings.”

In December, the AFT launched a major initiative both to draw attention to the problem and to identify solutions. The groundwork for the campaign, “Building Minds, Minding Buildings: Turning Crumbling Schools into Environments for Learning,” was laid by more than 1,000 AFT members who responded to a union survey on the physical status of their schools. 

An AFT report by the same name focuses on the problem of inadequate, unhealthy and unsafe conditions in public schools; the consequences of these conditions on student learning, staff retention and the health of both groups; the elements of well-designed, well-built, well-maintained schools; and recommendations for action at all levels to improve school buildings.

“The AFT has long championed higher standards and greater accountability. We believe that these principles must be reflected not only in high-quality teaching and a challenging curriculum, but also in the planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of our nation’s schools,” the report says. “We continue to believe that the school environment cannot be separated from the academic agenda.”

The report is available at www.aft.org/topics/building-conditions/downloads/minding-bldgs.pdf.

Member responses to the AFT survey revealed some startling—and deplorable—building conditions, from students who have to wear coats and gloves in class to rats and mice entering classrooms through windows and cracks in the walls. All too often, the backdrop to these horrors is extreme overcrowding.

It’s a problem that touches nearly every U.S. school system—not just in urban centers where school buildings tend to be older. Some of our newer schools are so poorly planned and constructed that they too pose significant health and safety—and learning—challenges.

Comments from AFT members who responded to the survey shed light on how these problems affect the attitudes and performance of students and staff. “When our students see the [new] facilities at other schools,” a member in Tyler, Texas, says, “they feel as if the city of Tyler does not care about them and their future.”

“The dirt, mold, animals, excessive heat and falling ceilings are all health risks,” writes Nancy Woodward, a teacher from Hammond, Ind.

The high school where she teaches Spanish is “old, dilapidated and overcrowded,” Woodward says. “We desperately need a new building. The science labs in our current school are totally inadequate,” and the repairs being done are simply “putting bandages on bad sores.”

An increase in cases of asthma may be linked to poor air quality, student concentration may be affected by temperature extremes, and student and staff absenteeism may be due to an unhealthy building environment, the AFT report notes.

Savannah (Ga.) Federation of Teachers president Alfreda Goldwire says she regularly gets complaints from members about the mold in their classrooms and schools. “Teachers are getting allergy shots, and some have recently been diagnosed with asthma,” says Goldwire, who has brought the problem to the attention of the district superintendent and school board members.

The high absenteeism of students and staff has sounded an alarm with top school officials, Goldwire explains. “It’s beginning to sink in that we do have a serious problem here.”

Unions, districts step up to the challenge

If there is any good news, it’s that some states and school districts are stepping up to the challenge—often with teacher and union involvement. In addition, the new Congress is expected to consider legislation that would provide funding to modernize old schools and build new ones (see sidebar below).

In New York, the Newark Teachers Association played an active role when the district undertook a $50 million building project. Union members sat on a planning committee, and the local monitored the process to ensure that ventilation standards and health and safety codes were adhered to.

 When severe overcrowding at the city high school in Bozeman, Mont., forced the school board to seek a $55 million bond, it asked Bozeman Education Association president Marco Ferro to co-chair a facilities task force. 

The school district had failed to gain teacher and community support for a previous bond. “The board realized that in order for the bond to be successful, it was going to take teacher support and that’s when [the board] came to me and asked me to co-chair the task force,” Ferro says.

After the task force recommended remodeling the existing high school and building a new middle school, Ferro and other members of the AFT affiliate served on a committee set up to promote the bond issue.

The bond issue passed. Teachers now are involved in the design of the remodeled high school and the new middle school, Ferro says, making sure indoor air-quality standards and ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations are taken into account.

Bozeman union member Glenn Bradbury is one of the teachers on the school design team. It’s an opportunity, he says, to design a new school that has staying power. “We need to have a good product at the end that works well with what we want to do now as well as in the future.”

Enough is enough: Teachers are leaving

Unsafe and unhealthy school conditions are a reason why teachers and other staff are leaving their schools—or the profession. More than 40 percent of teachers in Washington, D.C., and Chicago who gave their school facilities a grade of C or below in a 2002 national survey, said that poor conditions had made them consider changing schools; and 30 percent were thinking about leaving teaching.

“We are sick all of the time,” a teacher from Dade County, Fla., says. The result: “There are people quitting by the day or leaving the profession.”

Appalling physical conditions in U.S. schools leave in place a terrible pattern of inequity­­—a facilities gap—in which low-income and minority children are disproportionately affected, the “Building Minds, Minding Buildings” report points out.

“If this nation is committed to high academic standards,” the report concludes, “we must stop ignoring the impact that the physical environment plays in students’ health and learning.”

Sure, there are Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB), which provide modest help through the federal tax code for school repair, renovation and improvement. And there is Section 5414 of the No Child Left Behind Act, a federal study that concludes “the overall evidence strongly suggests that poor environments in schools, due primarily to effects of indoor pollutants, adversely influence the health, performance and attendance of students.” Stark as they may be, the findings contained in the report continue to gather dust on shelves in Washington, D.C.

But prospects for federal help may be improving in the new Congress. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been an advocate for federal action on the school infrastructure crisis. And Rangel, a co-sponsor of QZAB legislation, is also the new chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, the powerful group that sets tax policy in Congress. That puts the New York Democrat in a position not only to extend QZAB but also to press other forms of assistance through the tax code.

One such proposal is another Rangel initiative, the America’s Better Classrooms Act. The bill, which was tabled in the last Congress, would make more than $24 billion in bonds available for constructing new schools and improving existing ones. The federal government would provide tax credits to bond holders in lieu of interest payments—states and school districts would only be responsible for repaying the bond principal. The bottom line: Communities would save millions in interest and could stretch their limited budgets for school construction and improvement.

Prospects also are better for another stalled bill, the 21st Century High-Performing Public School Facilities Act. It was co-sponsored by Reps. Ben Chandler (D-Ky.) and George Miller (D-Calif.), members of the new Democratic majority in the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The bill calls for grants and loans to school districts for modernization and construction—with priority given to districts with greater numbers of low-income children.

The sponsors of the 21st Century Act are keenly aware that this assistance must supplement, not supplant, existing programs like Title I and IDEA, says AFT lobbyist Bill Cunningham. The AFT will be part of the effort to win passage for these and other long-overdue proposals to fix crumbling schools. And the union will propose new ideas, such as a “learning environment index” under NCLB, which will help focus attention on conditions that promote higher student achievement. That includes not only school facilities but also class size, safe and orderly classrooms, professional supports and other contributors to success.