I graduated from Springfield High School in 1966. My
classmates organized a 50th reunion for the same weekend that the Springfield
High School building turned 100.
District 186 staged a ceremony Friday
evening to mark the centennial of Springfield High School. (There are other
events planned; let’s hope they do better than this; the featured
speakers—school district functionaries and the mayor, who didn’t even go there;
where were the formers students and teachers who spent parts of their lives in
the building?)
A tour of the building was arranged for the ‘66ers. We were
warned that the building was much changed, but that was to be expected. If we
can see the 16-year-olds in each other’s present selves, we can see the 1966
building in what remains of it.
For the nostalgist, the best thing about the
building is that it is 100 years old. For the practical pedagogue, the worst
thing about the building is that it is 100 years old. The school
district shelved as unaffordable a plan unveiled in the latter 2000s to replace
it with a new building in suburban New Berlin, but I expect to see the plan
revived when the district judges the taxpayers to be in a better mood. This paper has argued for making the present
building the centerpiece of a much-expanded campus, with new and larger labs, cafeteria/commons, arts and gym
facilities and practice fields. (See “Building the new Springfield
High School,” May 29, 2008 and “Better boxes”
Dec. 17, 2009.) This is not because the main building is the best possible
building for a high school, but because the site is the best possible site for
one.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2016.
