as school districts upgrade their facilities, the historic 'traditional' school buildings are sometimes left without a purpose, only memories for those who attended there. it seems a shame to simply raze them.
in what ways can we recycle these old school buildings? what have you seen done locally? how else could they be used?
Moon :)
Favorite Answer
They could be used as community centers. Places where the children of the neighborhood can stay after school, and have people help them with their homeworks, practise sports, use computers, learn arts and crafts. There are classes for adults, too, where they can learn things that they can use at home, or to work, and make more money for the family. During the weekends, there are sports, and different activities, for all. They also meet there to discuss the problems of their community, and decide what to do about them.
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When I was a kid I lived in a small village in northwestern Missouri, a few hundred people moved out after the railroad closed up at the end of WWII, and less than100 people remained. There was a two-story brick schoolhouse on the edge of that town but it was no longer feasible to keep it running with just a few children, the handful of students were bussed to a larger town in the same county. A dairy farmer bought the schoolhouse property and used the bottom floor to store alfalfa hay through the winter months. About 20 years after the school closed, a few of us kids living there discovered the school, we walked inside and explored it. There were still all the desks upstairs, those old-fashioned ones with the chair attached to the front of a desk. The long black chalkboard was there too, and all the students had signed their names with different colors of chalk and put the date there. The farmer hadn't touched it. We mosied around a bit and left and went back to my friend's house and told her mother about it. She got really upset when we told her how the first-floor ceiling and second-floor floor was sagged down. She said it could have collapsed on us and never to go back. Too bad we didn't have cameras back then. Guess that was one use for an old school, but they need to be maintained. Another school in the next county caught on fire about 20 years later, it was closed and a new school built in a new location. That old school was also bought by a farmer to store hay. If the schools were built before 1980 or so there is a good chance that they are full of asbestos and whoever buys them will have to deal with that and also anyone who tears them down.
Krys
I've always thought they would make good centers for children to use. With a little TLC they would be great places for children to go after school (with supervision of course). It seems that there are very few people out there however that aren't willing to volunteer their time to things like this.
Also if smaller, as in older schools, with some alterations they could be good buildings to use as shelters.
It seems to me that people these days would rather spend more money building new buildings for these purposes than spending a lot less restoring them...what a shame!!!
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If we're going to fund Catholic and CofE schools and so on (which personally I don't agree with anyway), then we should also fund Islamic and Jewish schools etc. However, the people running this school were known extremists, and giving them any money at all is ridiculous. Now we have our own government funding, in effect, the spread of radical extremist ideas among young, impressionable muslims! Rather counter-productive at the very least, I feel. No, of course we should not be funding this school - these people should not be allowed to run a school full stop, government funded or not.
Your Highness
I have never seen an abandoned or closed school building.
I do know there is an old tiny high school near me that's like ancient, but it's being used as my school district's administration building, soooo it's not abandoned or closed.
Other than that, where I live most old buildings are never abandoned in the first place and just get built upon and remodeled. You should see some of our high schools, they look like patchwork quilts cause sections of them are all from different decades and its sooo obvious, haha