Fiddling in Morrisville: An Editorial

From the BCCT.

Dear Voters: If you're not disgusted by now with the way things are being run in this town, what will it take?

We were lucky. We dodged the proverbial bullet on this one big time. No students or repair crews were caught in the blast.

We fought over the money. As the tax funding dried up, we squabbled over what was left rather than frugally using what we had and making the hard choices. For years over successive school boards, maintenance items were routinely deferred and delayed just because we didn't have the money.

We fought over "illegal students", thinking the way to solvency was to exorcise and exclude those who didn't belong. We even had school board members camped out like bridge trolls waiting for an out of state licence plate as a badge of shame and as an excuse to pounce. That thinking persists even to this day.

Then we fought over the "gold plated Taj Mahal." Finally! Finally, when someone stepped up to the plate, swallowed hard, and made the hard choice to build anew to replace three crumbling structures, the nattering nay-sayers arose from their slumbers and nit picked the plan to death. All because it was "new" and it cost "money".

Investment in the future is never without cost. The reward, however, is incalculable.

What was the cost to build the Robert Morris High School the first time? What was the cost to renovate it into M. R. Reiter the second time? Yet this building has provided housing for our students for some eighty years. Expenditure: Large. Payback: Even larger.

I still think the idea of the new school was demonized unfairly, along with the high school students themselves, but that's water under the bridge. I hear the negative comments about the administration, the students, the staff, and all I can think of is that it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Yet here we are, groping vainly in the night for a solution.

This isn't about the "new school" versus the "old school." That would be like saying the new school offered a K-12 campus: The demise of Reiter and current enrollment stats makes this a great opportunity to cram everyone into the high school and call it a day. However, that's such a great example of the short-sighted thinking of our "leaders", I fully expect it to be the new reality.

What this is about is leadership and forward thinking. The mere act of producing a new building or renovating an old one doesn't make anything better in and of itself. You can take a positive action and mow the grass. The lot looks great for now, but it needs constant attention, so you make the commitment to keep at it. Your neighbor see what you're doing and joins in. Now there's two better kept yards. Soon there's a third. And so on, and so on... That example is pure corn, I know. But think about what Morrisville COULD be like if that style of thinking was the prevailing view.

It's about looking at today and instead of seeing the long dead past, or even the reality of today, seeing the future. Vision. Leaders have it. Others don't. President Reagan offered his can do optimism. President Carter offered us "malaise". Who won that election?

I know there's a pony in here somewhere. Let's look for it together.



Fiddling in Morrisville
The boiler explosion at the M.R. Reiter School is a warning that must not be ignored.

Like Nero’s legendary playing of his fiddle while Rome burned, Morrisville School Board members continue to fiddle with renovation plans while a school building nearly burned.

More accurately, the boiler at M.R. Reiter Elementary School exploded over the weekend, keeping students home from school Monday and administrators scrambling to find space for affected students in other district buildings.

Officials say damage at the school was limited to the boiler room, where windows were blown out. We’re glad to hear that the damage was confined. We are further relieved that classes were not in session when the boiler blew. School board members, who have delayed needed renovations at all three district schools, should feel fortunate indeed. Call it a warning, one board members cannot — must not — ignore. Delay no longer is acceptable.

This board has done little but fret over the future since the current majority took control nearly a year ago. Voted in to stop a $30 million plan to build a new K-12 school, members moved quickly to get that done. They have since been unable to move ahead on desperately needed renovations some of which clearly threaten the health and safety of district children.

School board President Bill Hellmann bears the most responsibility since he has taken it upon himself to make decisions without the full board’s input. Among his unitary decisions was removing M.R. Reiter from the renovation equation after companies had submitted repair proposals in June for all three buildings.

That done Hellmann and his friends on the board have a dire responsibility to do something — and do it now!

We’re not engineers, but our common sense perspective is that children should not be returned to that school. We don’t doubt parents would agree.

Maybe board members can make that decision without delay.