As Boston Public School students attended their first week of school in 90-degree weather, the city’s aging school buildings came into focus. Boston’s buildings are old. About two-thirds of the city’s 127 schools were constructed before World War II, and fewer than half of those have been renovated.
Most don’t have air conditioning, and many need new ventilation systems, according to city documents. The water fountains in many of the older schools are shut off, due to lead pipes carrying the water.
Under a campaign called “BuildBPS,” Mayor Marty Walsh has pledged to spend $1 billion to revamp Boston’s schools, so that “our kids go to a school that looks like a school that you would see in the suburbs and actually better than that.”
Walsh points to the new Dearborn STEM Academy, the first school built in Boston in 15 years, as an example of what he wants. The $73-million brick and glass building in Dorchester, tricked out with state-of-the-art labs and a makers’ space with 3D printers and welding equipment, was designed to prepare students for careers in computer science, graphic design and engineering.