boil like a frog
Jul. 16th, 2018 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanThere was a "heightened security alert" downtown last week that was apparently caused by some guy threatening to copy-cat the van attack.
Nothing actually happened. But still, fuck that guy.
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The Toronto District School Board has a program where adults can take classes in their empty schools in the evenings or during the summer. They offer everything from salsa dancing to basic car repair. I took a household electrician's class once many years ago and it was really worth it.
So I decided to sign up for intro Spanish, just for the heck of it. Duolingo has been great for learning to read, but less so for learning to speak it or understand what I hear. I figured being in a room full of people struggling with the same issues would get me past my initial reserve about mangling the language in front of people, and then after I could go join a meet-up group or something.
So because I am very very dumb, I signed up for a class in a high school. In July.
High schools don't have air conditioning.
It's my own damn fault, I know full well that schools are big brick ovens. There was even an article published about a year ago about how now that summers are getting longer and hotter what used to be about a two-week period of students rendered useless by the heat at the end of June has now stretched into two to three months. Last September was brutal, I can't imagine anybody being able to think clearly in that soup. And of course the online comments are full of people ranting about how when I were a lad we had no air conditioning and kids these days are so spoiled yada yada yada. Cause as we all know, the people who post to comment sections have never actually read the contents of these articles.
The school where the class is being held is one of the older ones in the city and a technical school to boot, so to say it's been subject to neglect would be the understatement of the year. And you know, it's one thing to read a headline about how the province has a $15 billion dollar repair backlog, it's quite another to be walking down the halls. Almost all of the lockers are some degree of broken. The paint is peeling, and there are regular patches on the walls where somebody has obviously filled in holes. None of the water fountains work, but it's probably just as well since I would lay down money that the pipes have lead in them anyway. In the bathroom there are only a handful of stalls that have doors, and there are obvious signs of mold damage everywhere. And of course, because the province had set aside the budget to cover 0.001% of it, our new Premier cancelled the funds.
It's become kind of a subject of horrified fascination for me. How bad will things get before somebody decides it's important? When kids and staff are regularly getting injured? Or will having roofs falling in on top of teenagers just become normal, like school shootings?
But you know, at least all those millionaires will be taken care of.
Nothing actually happened. But still, fuck that guy.
***************************
The Toronto District School Board has a program where adults can take classes in their empty schools in the evenings or during the summer. They offer everything from salsa dancing to basic car repair. I took a household electrician's class once many years ago and it was really worth it.
So I decided to sign up for intro Spanish, just for the heck of it. Duolingo has been great for learning to read, but less so for learning to speak it or understand what I hear. I figured being in a room full of people struggling with the same issues would get me past my initial reserve about mangling the language in front of people, and then after I could go join a meet-up group or something.
So because I am very very dumb, I signed up for a class in a high school. In July.
High schools don't have air conditioning.
It's my own damn fault, I know full well that schools are big brick ovens. There was even an article published about a year ago about how now that summers are getting longer and hotter what used to be about a two-week period of students rendered useless by the heat at the end of June has now stretched into two to three months. Last September was brutal, I can't imagine anybody being able to think clearly in that soup. And of course the online comments are full of people ranting about how when I were a lad we had no air conditioning and kids these days are so spoiled yada yada yada. Cause as we all know, the people who post to comment sections have never actually read the contents of these articles.
The school where the class is being held is one of the older ones in the city and a technical school to boot, so to say it's been subject to neglect would be the understatement of the year. And you know, it's one thing to read a headline about how the province has a $15 billion dollar repair backlog, it's quite another to be walking down the halls. Almost all of the lockers are some degree of broken. The paint is peeling, and there are regular patches on the walls where somebody has obviously filled in holes. None of the water fountains work, but it's probably just as well since I would lay down money that the pipes have lead in them anyway. In the bathroom there are only a handful of stalls that have doors, and there are obvious signs of mold damage everywhere. And of course, because the province had set aside the budget to cover 0.001% of it, our new Premier cancelled the funds.
It's become kind of a subject of horrified fascination for me. How bad will things get before somebody decides it's important? When kids and staff are regularly getting injured? Or will having roofs falling in on top of teenagers just become normal, like school shootings?
But you know, at least all those millionaires will be taken care of.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-16 02:44 pm (UTC)If it's the building I'm thinking of, at least it has good bones. It's in a state of disrepair, but it's not necessarily the worst. The 60s and 70s era buildings, while newer, weren't built as well and are basically a time bomb waiting to explode. Also they were built during the height of asbestos.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-16 02:58 pm (UTC)I'm unlikely to have grandchildren, but I feel like I should find some young children to tell them stories about the good old days when we used to spend money on public infrastructure.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-16 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-17 03:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-17 03:46 am (UTC)Yep, this! I spent a whole school year in Central Tech, myself. It's possible to retrofit that exact era and style of building. It's just the TDSB doesn't. The water seeping through the walls probably has asbestos. Teachers will talk to their adult students about it as a hush hush thing, but they don't feel secure enough in their employment to formally complain. Then of course Bloor CI is condemned and they moved all those kids into Brockton which had been condemned already years ago but apparently is not as condemned as everything else, now, so they're back in it.
YEAH. We moved.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-17 12:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-07-17 03:46 am (UTC)Even though we were ultimately lucky, I get so pissed at the fact that nobody tried to prevent this, nor are they going out of their way to stop it from happening again. Pretty much all of the schools around here are shit. I mean, except for the Catholic schools. They're apparently pretty nice. Oh, and the new fancy private schools that all the tech people are putting up for their kids, thus sucking away state and local resources from the public schools that actually need them.