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Health & Fitness

This Is Who We Are - Eric Coble on the importance of supporting Issue 81

Playwright Eric Coble is a resident of Cleveland Heights, parent in the district, and member of the CH-UH Board of Education. Here he shares his reasons for supporting Issue 81, the CH-UH school facilities bond issue, on the Nov. 5 ballot.

When I ran for School Board way back in 2007, one of my goals was to create a master plan for our facilities -- to avoid the inevitable Russian Roulette of closing a school every 6-7 years, pitting neighborhood against neighborhood, until we finally got the right amount and kind of buildings for the next century. We need to look at the BIG picture, to carefully choose which buildings we will need the most (saving the taxpayers millions of dollars) and make those buildings the best they can be -- schools our cities can be proud of, that will serve our students and teachers well while being energy efficient, sustainable, accessible to EVERYONE in our community, and flexible enough to meet whatever the 21st century deals out.

We now have that plan. It's up to us to say "Yes" to it.

Issue 81 will provide the funds to completely renovate Heights High School, bringing it back to a modern version of its 1920's glory days (have you SEEN those pictures??), as well as renovating Monticello Middle School and Roxboro Middle School, bringing them into this century while still maintaining their classic appearance. Once we've accomplished this, we'll take on the elementary schools.

There are a ton of reasons to support this plan -- a few obvious ones:

1) Getting our buildings up to state standards and beyond WILL help students perform better. Nobody can put a number on how much, but you know being in the RIGHT sized classrooms with the RIGHT equipment (especially our science labs), proper ventilation, heating, cooling, teachers and parents and students and even a community that is proud of what our education LOOKS like to the outside world -- all of these cannot do anything but make it easier to learn. Fifty degree fluctuations in room temperature aren't good for anybody. Neither is the money we're throwing at repairing instruments, equipment, and supplies because they're damaged by moisture, temperature, etc. Fixing the buildings won't fix all our problems, but it will make it easier to take them on. I truly believe this.

2) We are going to have to do this at some point. These buildings are almost 100 years old, and have been "frankensteined" along as long as we could. Literally every district around us is upgrading their buildings, which will leave us with the oldest/worst buildings in the area bar none. And there's no way that helps property values. And so at some point we will need to do this work (things will actually start collapsing), and then it will ONLY be much more expensive. Labor, supplies, all of it, will only cost us more with every month we wait. And the state may well give us even LESS money (which is actually possible - there is $25 million on the table now). As difficult as it is, this is the best time. It's like a medical procedure that is going to be really hard -- do you do it now or wait until it gets worse?

3) When this passes, not only will we start SAVING taxpayer money on our buildings and their maintenance, but we'll get over 10 years of real economic boom going on in our cities (all that construction, materials, labor, lunches bought, stores visited -- in every corner of the community) - THAT I'm looking forward to. And I do believe that great buildings will only increase our property values.

But here is my biggest reason for supporting Issue 81:

This is who we are.

Almost one hundred years ago Cleveland Heights and University Heights said, "Yes. This is who we want to be." We were a community that valued public education and were willing to spend the money to build the buildings to shelter the next five generations of children while they learned. Then, as now, there were people who stood up and screamed loudly "NO!" It's in the records -- people who were dead set against any elementary school going up in THEIR backyard and ruining the nice wooded area. But the majority of our community said "Yes." "This is who we are."

And now it's our turn.

Is that fair? Is it desirable? Perhaps not; nobody I know has extra money to spend right now, certainly not our family. But it's on us. This is OUR chance to keep the torch lit for another 100 years, to be the generation that parents and children will look back on in the 22nd Century and say… "They said 'Yes'. They valued education THAT much. They were what it means to live in the Heights."

On November 5, I hope you'll join me in voting FOR Issue 81.

Thank you,
Eric Coble

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