This story from Detroit is exactly why I study school construction and why it’s so important:

1. Voters approve an expensive construction bond to re-build a number of schools.
2. The School District decides to shutter a number of those schools.
3. Voters are pissed; why would we vote to increase our taxes by spending money for schools that won’t serve our communities?


From the time a community begins agitating or from the moment a school district official decides a school is necessary, vast changes can occur, both within the neighborhood and within the school district. Each step of the process adds new wrinkles to the design and once decisions are made, it’s very difficult to go back and change them. But once the school opens, man, that’s it, what you see is what you get. For the next fifty to one hundred years.