Kansas City Teaching Moment Tuesday: Can We Finally Admit KCPS Repurposing FAIL?!?!



It's time to face facts and come to terms with the reality of so many abandoned school buildings blighting Kansas City neighborhoods.

Moreover . . .

DURING ELECTION SEASON LET'S FINALLY BREAK DOWN AND ADMIT THAT THERE'S NO HOPE OR MONEY TO DO ANYTHING WITH SO MANY DECREPIT AND BLIGHTING EMPTY KANSAS CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!

This is a tragic fact that NOBODY wants to admit. Instead, throngs of neighborhood nitwits would rather attend a series of pointless community meetings that build up their hopes and dreams and then inevitably offer nothing constant disappointment.

The KCPS calls it "repurposing" but it's nothing more than a ruse intended to mislead more gullible residents into believing deceptive propaganda promoting the blatant lie that there's any hope to do something with these buildings. As the years pass, this stalling tactic becomes more woefully transparent and despicable.

On Kansas City's Westside, one administration after the next has promised to clean up the Switzer/West Jr. complex and building ownership has changed hands more than a few times but the simple laws of economics reveal nothing but (totally unlikely) massive subsidy will fix the situation.

Meanwhile, it only takes one good winter to damage an empty KCPS building so badly that it becomes unusable. Never-mind all of the asbestos secretly hosted by so many of the structures that the school district doesn't dare mention.

Of course, confronting this reality means coming to terms with some pretty brutal realities about the future of Kansas City. The days of this town serving as home to vast educational complexes filled with future generations of students are over. Kansas City simply isn't a good place to raise a family. Changing that perception isn't going to happen any time in the near future. In the meantime, the empty buildings are tanking property values throughout Kansas City and local politicos would rather mislead the public with happy talk sessions rather than confront the cruel reality: The buildings need to be torn down.

LINKS:

Developers present redevelopment visions for Westport High

The group trying to save the Thacher Elementary met to discuss ideas to save the building

Proposals heard — again — on what to do with Westport High School

Save Thacher, Save Our Schools Donation Amount: $0

Developing . . .

Comments

  1. What will really turn things around here?

    Streetcar.

    There is your answer.

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  2. That is a very cynical point of view and it does nothing to hold our elected leaders accountable for their failure to be good stewards of our history and our communities. People get cranky when you ask for subsidies in diverse, mixed income communities, but we tend to get over it sooner when we give subsidies to large corporations who "create" jobs in our "preferred" neighborhoods.

    Many of the struggles facing the children in KCPS stem from various of socioeconomic factors. We can either address that and come up with a proactive solution for it, or we can continue to ignore it, and let the problem get worse.

    I cannot stress enough that repurposing vacant school buildings to directly address the challenges that many of our urban communities face is probably about the best investment that our city government and public school district could make. I believe the state and federal governments have an interest as well.

    No, it will not be cheap, and we won't see the results overnight, but if politicians would stop worrying about their careers and start looking for opportunities to partner with philanthropists, nonprofits, and the business community, we could solve much bigger problems than how to attract millennials to live here.

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  3. What is there like one school left here in Sly's CK that's even worth considering send your kids to?

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  4. All of the KCMO schools need to be torn down. The vacant ones too.

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  5. Every minority contractor is lining up to cash in on mandatory set-asides in these projects. And the one that throws the biggest bones to Freedom Inc, etc is the one that's gonna get it. Period.

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  6. What was the result of the Westport meeting?

    Fouchs or BNIM?

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am Not A robot2/24/15, 3:32 PM

    Lets be real Byron. Once you are elected you will be beholden to the Teachers Union(AFT) and their boyfriends in the AFL/CIO who will fight tooth and nail to keep these buildings empty rather than see successful Charter Schools run these buildings. KC core politics is dominated by so-called liberals who care more about upholding a broken educational system (which funnels tax money to cronies like Shannon Jaxx) and maintains a permanent non-voting ignorant government dependent underclass. These criminals are empowered by so-called black leaders in freedumb and Airwack West, who fight for scraps ie minority set asides while developers and the Kempers laugh all the way to the bank.

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  8. Repurpose was the litany of Airwick the one time only school board candidate who has probably forgotten the repurpose promises just lie he did the "I will run one time only"

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  9. "In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."-Mark Twain

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