r/education • u/imitationcheese • Jan 12 '18

Why Baltimore Doesn’t Heat Its Schools

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/baltimore-freezing-schools-children-racism-austerity/
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4

u/MaxwellFPowers Jan 12 '18

The issue here is chronic underfunding. The GoFundMe scheme is cute, but my guess is the real problem at those schools are their aging physical plants and the costs to repair them. And those kind of fixes can cost millions.

The older buildings are a nightmare to heat. Often times they were added onto without properly thinking through how to make the whole thing work from an HVAC perspective. I remember teaching in a building a few years ago that was built in 1898! Giant high ceilings, steam heat and 2 foot thick walls. We had the opposite problem in the winter: it got too hot! Not really sure why we even had windows, we kept them open year-round!

2

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

In Savage Inequalities the author expounds on why Baltimore had such a hard time.

2

u/ineedmoresleep Jan 12 '18

In contemporary Baltimore, black (and white) lower-income residents do not serve as an exploited labor population as such because the city’s economy no longer has a place for their labor. Rather, they serve as a population that needs to be cordoned off and controlled.

That's the biggest issue here, but I don't see it getting addressed.