Opinion: "Semi-permanent Monuments to our Societal Indifference to the Educational Environment Endured by Children."

Are you at peace with the idea that students should need to bundle up in winter or carry an umbrella when it rains, simply to visit the restroom? You may stop reading now.
Are you not annoyed that the terrain previously utilized by children during recess has evolved into a trailer park sometimes surrounded by 8-foot-high chain-link fence? This op-ed is not for you.
You will sometimes hear them referred to as “modular classrooms.” Euphemistically, educators call them “temporaries” or “temps.” This, however, is a misnomer. Seldom are they “temporary.”
They have, instead, become semi-permanent monuments to our societal indifference to the educational environment endured by children.
We must forget, for a moment, that the climate in our permanent structures is sometimes so unbearable — leaking ceilings, mildew, sweltering in the summer, frigid in the winter — that, occasionally, teachers come to prefer life in the trailer park hidden behind the schoolhouse. That will be another story...

Continues at: 

http://www.gazette.net/article/20130912/OPINION/130919677/1014/a-tale-of-two-school-systems&template=gazette