Parents Demand Significant Upgrades at Jefferson Elementary

Issues with the aging facility were first raised with the district more than a decade ago. The restrooms in Jefferson Elementary School were inadequate, Summit school officials said, especially for the younger female students who would have to climb a couple of sets of stairs just to reach them.

The sloping asphalt drive leading from the back of the school was too steep and presented a safety risk. And the electrical transformer, situated right on the grassy hill where children play, always seemed like an unnecessary risk.

But it likely wasn’t until construction completed on school’s independent addition in 2008, the Jefferson Primary Center, that the issues plaguing the aging elementary school became pronounced. Touted as a state-of-the-art learning center for Summit’s youngest students, the opening of the Primary Center was like seeing a bionic limb strapped to an already ailing body. It shined while the elementary school’s problems remained.

Over the past few months, anxious parents of Jefferson Elementary students have advocated for improvements to the school, calling for the district to make them a priority in its capital improvement plan. In recent weeks, representatives from the school’s Parent-Teacher Organization have even gone as far as to create a petition with a list of necessary upgrades for Jefferson in hopes of convincing the town’s mayor and board of education members to see to it that the school gets the funding it needs.

“I would think that if something was needed at the school it would just happen, but it hasn’t,” Jefferson PTO Co-President Tracey Luckner said during a telephone interview Tuesday. “It’s been going on for a long time. Many of the issues we’ve raised, especially the issue of the girls not having a bathroom near the cafeteria, have been around for a while. The parents of Jefferson haven’t really spoken out about our needs until recently.”

In the group’s petition, which was posted on Change.org, a global petition platform that includes petitions for topics ranging from human rights issues to solicitations for dinner with a favorite celebrity, highlights the issues parents would like to see rectified at the school.

In addition to finding adequate solutions for the transformer, the bathroom problem, and the slope leading to the entrance of the school, parents are also asking the district to build an addition to the school – its own this time – that would provide more instruction space and a main office and administrative space at the entrance of the school.

Parents expected most of these updates to be rolled in to construction of the Primary Center, but that apparently was not the case.

“At the time I think everyone assumed that these other issues would be addressed after this new addition was put on,” Barbara Powers, a former PTO co-president and mother of a fifth grade student, said. “Some of these have been chronic problems for years. After a while you almost get used to it in a way.”

At least one of the requests included in the petition is a response to a more recent incident, however.

Following the events at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. in which 26 people, 20 of them children, were shot and killed, school officials began assessing safety measures at their own schools. At Jefferson, visitors are buzzed in to a stairwell that’s some distance from the main office, Powers said. Visitors are asked to report to the main office but they’re just as capable of wandering the halls of the schools if they choose. The lack of a main office at the school’s entrance only magnifies concerns of worst-case scenarios.

Currently, the district has a five-year capital improvement spending plan that includes $22 million in upgrades spread throughout the district’s schools. A $5 million plan to build a two-story expansion at Jefferson, one that would address nearly all of the internal issues, is on the table but must first be approved by the district’s Board of School estimates. On Monday, May 13, officials will decide to approve or deny funding for various projects, including Jefferson’s upgrades.

With other school’s clamoring for upgrades of their own, Jefferson parents aren’t afraid of doing some lobbying of their own. And Jefferson, they feel, is a school that just might need a little bit of an advantage.

According to Powers, roughly half of Jefferson’s students are Hispanic. Approximately 30 percent of the school’s students qualify for free or reduced lunch. What she fears this means is that some parents may be unable to communicate their needs to the district or may be working too hard to spend the time doing things like attending board meetings or spending hours asking for signatures on a petition outside of the school in afternoons.

But recent attention has changed some of that, she feels.

“Some people might think that, oh, this school gets ignored because it’s a low social-economic school. I don’t necessarily feel that way, but a large population (of student parents) is non-English speaking so they may be unable to raise their concerns,” Powers said. “I don’t think the school is being ignored, it’s just kind of how things evolved.

“Now, families are becoming more vocal about the issues, they’re saying look at these things.”

Insight into the board’s plan for Jefferson was not immediately known. Calls to district officials, including the board’s business administrator, were not returned Tuesday.