Invest in kids’ future. Vote yes to fix Kansas City Public Schools’ broken buildings | Opinion

A little more than two years ago, I got a midday email from my daughter’s preschool, Longfellow Elementary in Kansas City’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Something had gone wrong at the school: Carbon monoxide had filled classrooms and hallways, sickening kids and teachers. Those who weren’t taken away in ambulances were evacuated. We were told to wait to be reunited with our kids, either at the hospital or another school. It was a message no parent ever wants to receive.

For years, Longfellow had been in disrepair. Although the leak itself wasn’t the direct result of the crumbling condition of the school, the failure of the alarms or rapid response to the leak was the result of a long history of things breaking or malfunctioning at the school. It’s hard to tell what’s serious or not when things always seem to be going wrong. At the close of that school year, the district shuttered Longfellow permanently, in large part because of the school’s disastrous condition and the millions of dollars in needed building maintenance the district couldn’t afford.

While Longfellow is gone, its story remains shockingly common around Kansas City. Throughout the district, buildings crack and leak. Classrooms are too hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Playground equipment rusts and fractures. Despite the diligent work of teachers and the district’s steadily-improving academic performance, the physical conditions of its schools fail to keep some Kansas City kids safe, warm and dry.

The kind of core infrastructure work needed to repair and modernize our city’s public schools can be paid for only through general obligation bonds. Voters haven’t approved such funds for the Kansas City Public Schools system since 1967, more than half a century ago. In the interim, school buildings throughout the district — some nearly a century old — have gone without necessary maintenance for decades.

On April 8, Kansas City voters can approve the funds needed to transform our schools. The 20-year general obligation bond on the ballot, paid for through property taxes, would raise $474 million dedicated to capital improvements and upgrades in and around buildings. If approved, more than 40 schools would receive at least $5 million to fund repairs and projects. Foreign Language Academy, my children’s current school — an amazing public school that offers Spanish and Mandarin language programs — would be able to renovate bathrooms, climate control systems and the cafeteria. The school would be better able to meet basic needs, which means fewer distractions and a better learning environment for my kids.

Included in the funding would be nine charter schools, some of which — such as Academie Lafayette — are housed in former public school buildings just as old and in disrepair as any in the district. Academie Lafayette plans to spend more than $13 million on fixing the windows, roofing and heating and air conditioning.

The list of deeply necessary repairs and basic improvements to Kansas City schools is long. Core plumbing and heating systems are pockmarked with rust. Water fountains and toilets sit broken and unusable. When I attended KC public schools 30-plus years ago, the buildings felt old and damaged to the point of being disruptive. There’s been no money to fix the schools since then. Asking our kids to try to learn in such obviously broken environments is an insult. No child deserves to feel like the adults in charge of their world don’t care about their education or their safety.

The bond funds would go beyond simply fixing the plumbing and weatherproofing the windows. Today, when Kansas City Public Schools students travel outside of the district for academic competitions or basketball games, they can see how good other kids have it, with new gyms and cutting edge classrooms, paid for largely through successful bonds. Voters in the Shawnee Mission School District have approved three bonds totaling nearly $700 million since 2004. Kansas City public schoolkids step into those schools today as visitors, and the difference is disappointingly obvious.

School officials in Kansas City have made big plans for how the bond money could go to modernizing their classrooms, gyms, auditoriums and playgrounds. New technology equipment, turf pitches for soccer fields, revamped gymnasiums, a fully reimagined career technical education center at Central High — the list goes on. Once passed, teachers and kids could see improvements very quickly, dovetailing with projects already underway funded by district loans.

The school bond isn’t just about repairing past neglect. It’s about being able to afford a better future for our children.