New campus, old ideas

To the editor: It’s as if our school board has never heard of architecture or engineering. Judging from your front page story two weeks ago (July 27), it looks like they’re ready to spend $5 million for a huge chunk of land in the Delaware River corridor, then probably twice that amount to build quick-and-dirty one-storey buildings sprawled out all over the land -- just like existing Delaware Valley structures. For less than half that amount, extant school buildings could be converted into beautifully designed, efficiently engineered, ecological and inexpensive to operate multi-storey marvels. And a gorgeous piece of the planet would remain undestroyed. Pam Lutfy says that putting another student onto the DV campus would be “unconscionable,” and she’s right. When those buildings were dreamed up by school boards in the past, the same criteria were employed that are now being considered: immediate needs, unlimited public funds, eager contractors, willing township officials, and land available at a premium. No thought was given to the environment, to aesthetics, to efficiency, or to the future. Now we’re going to make the same mistakes, which condemns us to facing the same choices in ten or fifteen years. Let’s solicit bids for proposals from architectural and engineering firms to generate ideas for expanding our current facilities -- for turning existing, barely functional, ugly single-storey structures into multi-storey monuments to our intelligence and foresight. We can have a competition to see who comes up with the best ideas. This is what architects and engineers do. By definition, leaders can train new leaders only by example. We need someone to show some leadership on this issue, not just more of the same-old that got us where we are, in a jackpot. Tony Splendora Milford