Here we have a few of the soldiers in a huge fleet of vee-hickles who are rebuilding the Haisley parking lot, the school behind the woods behind the Landfill, where the beach urchins attended grade school and I toiled for many hours as a hands-on volunteer. We bought the Landfill when we knew that Elizilla was on the way. One of the reasons we bought it was because there was a *school* behind the woods behind the house. It is a school that my children could walk to without crossing a major street — or any street. Walk a half block, turn right, walk another half-block and you are in the schoolyard! It was actually easier and faster for us to get to the school on foot than by driving, which involved over a mile on major Planet Ann Arbor arteries.

The parking lot… It’s been longer than I care to remember since the beach urchins attended Haisley School but the parking lot was a problem even then. According to the principal dictator at the time. The school was built in 1950. At that time probably just about everybody walked to school. The 1990s? Not so much. Lots of people drove their kids from even a few blocks away. And then there were the buses. And now that kids are coming in from the McMansions that blanket so much of our beautiful county’s once-farmland, I’m sure it’s worse.

I was the PTO newsletter editor for a few years and I can remember the principal dictator having hissies about how to get the word out to parents about how to navigate the parking lot. (Hint: The PTO newsletter is probably not the best way to do that. Just sayin’.) That was a long time ago and I don’t know where that principal dictator is these days but it seems she got her wish.

MAJOR reconstruction of the Haisley parking lot this summer. All summer. Who in the Planet Ann Arbor school administration has a brother-in-law in the parking lot business? This is the Cadillac of parking lots. The old parking lot was really not that bad. It was paved and there were handicap ramps. I dunno. I don’t think the huge amount of development done to this parking lot was necessary to improve it. In my experience with school parking lots, the problem is usually that people are inconsiderate of others. They jockey for spots and ignore traffic signs and sit there idling (watch for a post on idling maybe later this week).

I may be wrong but I have a very hard time believing that this huge parking lot improvement was necessary. And, given that our whole country is struggling with education and even the Planet Ann Arbor is *still* struggling with the achievement gap, WHY are we spending our tax dollars building fancy new parking lots? Shouldn’t our hard earned dollars be directed to readin’ ‘ritin’ ‘n’ ‘rithmetic?

I know enough about accounting to know that there are different buckets and that rebuilding a dern parking lot does not fall into the same category as RRR. But, what the heck? Why can’t we reorganize the damn buckets? The school district’s primary responsibilty is to educate children. Keeping buildings and even parking lots up to snuff is important for student safety. But…

I think that this is a good example of why citizens need to pay attention to their local boards and politicians.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2011 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.