But we also know that some of the finest schools in the US and in the world happily inhabit buildings two, three or even five times as old as the existing Everett High School. Surely, it is the curriculum and the teaching staff which make a school excellent. Putting an under-performing school into a new building doesn t make it an excellent school. The trigger for this rush to build schools on parks is well meant legislation to provide state funding for schools in areas of special need. Unfortunately, the funding applied only to the structure but not to the acquisition of land.
Cities see parks as free land which has no value.
Changes have been made in regulations to correct this situation but Everett is trying to get in under the wire. We all know that if anyone suggested building a school on Lexington Green or Monument Square in Concord, citizens wouldn t even allow it to reach the stage of a formal proposal. But in cities like Everett and Malden, many residents have to concentrate on the pressing needs of paying the rent and putting food on the table. We have learned that, so far as the process of public participation works at all, it is only when there is a well informed citizenry with adequate resources, time, and the determination to fight for their rights. The Sierra Club recognizes that to the people who inhabit the central portions of older cities, a ten-acre park is more important than whose wonderful national parks that they may never be able to afford to visit.