Better schools: Along with pride of the new look comes regret of not doing it sooner

Seeing the computer labs, the spanking new middle school cafeteria, the shiny blue and white tiled floors and the state-of-the-art libraries made me realize how simply awful those school facilities have been for decades. We sent our kids there, amidst the smelly classrooms, the moldy ceilings and walls, the lack of quality restroom facilities and half-a-century-old design.

Our kids endured that, but thank God my grandkids won’t.

Salem R-80 Superintendent Steve Carvajal took me on a tour of the renovated facilities Wednesday as The Salem News worked on news coverage of the final stages of the project. Carvajal, by the way, is the key to why this school project is happening. He came to town a few years ago, and with an old coach’s mentality charged headfirst, unapologetically and highly motivated into this bond issue and renovation thing. Our oft-conservative and laid back community owes a great deal to him and his aggressive, can-do attitude. He woke us up.

Anyway, along with Carvajal and me was Catherine Wynn of The Salem News, who put together a video of this wonderful addition to our educational system and community. You can see it at thesalemnewsonline.com.

More than a decade ago she was Catherine Dodd, and she walked the halls of the junior and senior high as a student before graduating in 2002. I am so sorry that we as a community didn’t make these changes sooner, so that my daughter Catherine and thousands of our kids and neighbor kids would have gone to a school like the one I went through Wednesday.

I didn’t ask Catherine much about what she thought of the new look to her old stomping grounds. I was afraid to. Ashamed to.

Yes, I know our kids are proud of SHS despite its warts and the community’s duct-tape approach to facilities. After all, the most important parts of a school, the parts that make it rewarding and memorable, are the people filling the seats and desks. Students and teachers make the school, not the shine of the gymnasium floor.

Heck, we’ve been telling ourselves that year after year after year as our junior and senior high schools rotted away. And while we were correct in theory, we miserably failed in looking at the big picture.

Our kids deserved better. Thus, as a community leader I regret not leading the charge years ago to gain what we have now: a middle school and high school facility to be proud of. Now, we can be proud of our kids, teachers and our school.

Who do we blame for not doing this years ago? I guess, we can all take the blame. Leaders were afraid to go for it. Voters convinced themselves it wasn’t really needed. School administrators maybe felt a little bit of both. We just kept clicking along doing the same things the same way in the same places we always had.

But today, as I look misty eyed at that wonderful new asset for our kids and community, I can’t help but look in the rearview mirror and see my own kids spending seven or eight hours a day in that outdated facility. Like us, until now they didn’t know what they were missing.

What were we thinking?