MC on 'The Dungeon'

The Morning Call has an article today supporting the NASD's $1.2M weight room renovation and expansion (read it here).

The article notes that the students refer to the locker-room area as the 'dungeon'.

Now I've not been in the locker-room area for sometime and I suspect that the 'original' locker-rooms previously used only for gym-glasses off the main gym have been renovated, because they were in worse shape the ones now referred to as the 'dungeon'.

For those of you who attended the 'original' Junior High, now the School House Apartments across from Shafer, I'm quite certain you'd remember those locker-rooms. As close as I've been to a real dungeon with the dark concrete walls and recesses people seemed to change rather quick just to get out of there.

Nostalgia aside, the article notes the ventilation system is broken. Why has it not been fixed? Considering we did have a mold outbreak, taking an area that has moisture (showers and bathrooms) and is often in the dark (lights out when not in use) why wouldn't this have been a priority.

It seems the ventilation and air conditioning is an on-going problem at NASD. The current Middle School, soon to be intermediate school, had several rooms with no air conditioning during the heat wave we had. Shafer also had rooms without air at the time. I'm sure if these two had problems there were others.

Starting school before Labor Day or ending mid to late June only puts additional emphasis on having these systems working (and presumable higher costs), but this is the schedule we have, so it would seem we should have these systems working properly.

Letting things go to later point out the poor condition to gain approval for renovation is bad enough, but to then add costs by expanding the area at a time of near 10% tax hikes is simply wrong.

The other element of the article is on new sports facilities. Nazareth has done this better than anyone of late - having added a turf field, swimming pool, gym (at the new MS - which will give us four with bleachers), track/practice field (new MS), soccer field (re-graded), and now weight room.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but the point is we are spending too much at a time we should be cost conscious - each of these items will require additional maintenance and expense over time and I'm sure we haven't budgeted for that, but will have to pay for it.

Priorities (education over extra-curricular over overhead) of needs, not of wants is where our project focus should lie and we seem to only want.