Letters to the Editor: Updating Northbrook's Meadowbrook School might be better option
Consider your vote in Northbrook
District 28's Facebook website says, '…Replacing Meadowbrook Elementary [is] at the core of the (April 1) referendum.'
But is replacement really the best path? The board itself seems split. Four members voted to bring the proposal to public referendum. Three voted not to.
What's behind the misgivings? Some hunches:
(1) Constructing a new Meadowbrook would disrupt daily life for students, teachers and anyone nearby – a lot, for years.
(2) From a dollars standpoint, it's unclear whether it's more cost effective to build a whole new school or to restore, modernize, and enlarge the one that's there. The board itself doesn't really know. Its authorization for the public referendum apparently hinged on a squishy architectural 'rule of thumb' – a generic guesstimate of relative construction costs for a typical school, not Meadowbrook-specific numbers.
(3) Replacement is also wasteful from an environmental standpoint. It throws away, quite literally, all the energy and materials latent in the current school's infrastructure. That substantial 'embodied energy' should have been factored into costing out alternatives.
(4) Finally, some board members may want spending to be better balanced; less on a premium new structure, more directly on teachers and old-fashioned education.
No question: Bring Meadowbrook's physical plant up to 21st century standards. Augment its squeezed interior space. Many of us longtime residents would add, preserve and refresh this town landmark. The issue is how best to do all of that.
April 1 is a teachable moment about what's at stake in rehabbing our schools. Voting no should not feel negative. It's actually positive. In effect, the community would be asking the board to take another year and come back to us in 2026 with a solution that is responsible, financially and environmentally.
Steven A. Farwell
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