On Restoration, Renewal, and the Imperative to Repair
When infrastructure ages and decays, we can choose to abandon or muster the will to invest
My favorite part of Central Park is the Conservatory Gardens. Tucked past the winding paths encircling the Harlem Meer, the garden can be entered through giant wrought-iron gates along 5th Avenue near 105th Street. Composed of three distinct spaces, the middle Italian-style garden features a large rectangular lawn flanked by two allées (as I now know they are called) of flowering crabapple trees.
I’ve taken dozens of pictures of these trees over the years. They’re most glorious in spring when they erupt with white and pink blossoms that overwhelm the cobbled walkways and create a canopy of shadows and shade for passersby. In autumn and winter, fallen leaves reveal gnarled trunks, twisted branches, and mottled grayish-brown bark.
According to the Central Park Conservancy, an original set of crabapple trees was planted in this part of the park in 1937. In the mid-1950s, this first generation was replaced by the ones I’ve come to know so well in the last two decades – trees that by the end of last year had surpassed their 70th birthdays.
Last fall, I learned of the conservancy’s plans to replace these septuagenarian trees. According to a sign posted upon those impressive gates, despite the careful tending they receive, the crabapple trees were nearing the end of their life span. Six of the forty-four second generation trees had already been removed due to severe decay, and “many of the remaining trees [were] experiencing progressive decline as they reach the end of their sustainable lives.” Given this reality, the conservancy was planning for a full, simultaneous replacement of the aging trees with new crabapple plantings – ones that would be aesthetically similar to those of the past, while being more disease resistant to increase sustainability in the future.
I felt kind of amazed by this pronouncement – holding both feelings of loss (what do you mean these trees were nearing the end of their life span???) and deep appreciation (to imagine that future generations of park-goers would benefit from this incredible cycle of renewal and restoration!). Walking through the park in mid-March, I saw the new plantings for myself, their buds just beginning to spark light green, their branches stretching outwards yet yards upon yards away from creating a canopy. I again felt a mix of feelings — but mostly I felt a surge of wonder and awe. What will this place look like decades into the future, when the replanted trees are thriving? How will that experience feel for park-goers, who otherwise would have witnessed the ongoing decay and demise of these allées, branch by branch, tree by tree?
Leaving the Conservatory Gardens and moving southward through the paths of the park, I encountered another sign from the conservancy, this one with a quote from a park-goer stating: “I remember Central Park when it felt abandoned. The conservancy has performed a miracle” (emphasis mine). Never having personally experienced the park in disrepair, this quote reinforced for me the stark contrast between what once was compared with what presently exists, and what could have been versus what is yet to be.
If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you’ve probably been anticipating the connection between this work and the work of schooling. Certainly, many analogies could be made between the need for renewal and restoration of parks and recreational spaces and that of educational spaces. So why not consider how we might apply lessons from the Central Park Conservancy to the need to repair and rebuild the physical infrastructure of our schools?
Concerns about the decaying physical infrastructure of our nation’s schools are central within octogenarian Jonathan Kozol’s latest (and last) book, which connects the chronically savage inequalities in public schooling he’s been writing about for decades with the intractability of racial and economic segregation. An excerpt from the book illustrates the injustice of crumbling school infrastructure and its heartrending impact upon our most marginalized students and communities. Kozol describes:
The physical decay of school buildings made all the more painful in schools claiming Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as their namesake;
Unusable bathrooms with unflushable toilets and lacking the most basic necessities that students avoid at all costs; and
Classrooms without functional heating and cooling systems, creating learning environments that are boiling hot in the summer and literally freezing over with icicles in the winter.
Kozol cites a 2018 Washington Post article by Rachel Cohen that shares the statistic that the average U.S. school is 45 years old – and even older in former industrial cities. Given that funding for schools wasn’t included in Congress’s 2021 infrastructure bill, the lack of significant investment in the past half-decade means that, at present, the average school in the U.S. was built over 50 years ago. As Kozol reminds, the consequences of disrepair are not just aesthetic or functional; far too many schools located within marginalized communities are literally physically toxic, putting students and families at increased risk of lead poisoning and increased exposure to cancer-causing asbestos fibers.
And of course these issues around decaying and even toxic physical infrastructure are inseparable from issues around educational or instructional infrastructure – including whether our schools are even capable of being houses of learning when their physical condition is so poor. I’m reminded of the 2019 Gary B. v. Whitmer case, in which Detroit students brought a lawsuit against the state of Michigan, illuminating this issue with vivid clarity. Made to attend school in “physically dangerous facilities” with “inadequate books and materials” and “missing or unqualified teachers,” the teenage plaintiffs argued that they had been deprived “a basic minimum education, meaning one that provides a chance at foundational literacy.” As they argued, their schools, serving “almost exclusively low-income children of color,” were “schools in name only,” incapable of providing adequate shelter let alone quality instruction.
These realities are so maddening because they are problems that should be unconscionable in contemporary America, yet reflect a status quo in which educational injustice is outrageously commonplace. Though the majority of Americans would never accept this state of affairs for their own children, as a society, we’ve continued to disinvest in the common good, allowing these problems to persist even when we have the resources and know-how to address them.
Thinking about the words of the park-goer I quoted earlier, I don’t think solving such problems requires a miracle. But, as Kozol argues, it does require killing the myth of scarcity that enables our society to continue to withhold resources from historically and persistently marginalized communities in which they are needed most.
In New York City, this gap between availability and use of resources to support renewal of school infrastructure is playing out in a particularly pointed and urgent way, as the climate crisis accelerates the impact of outdated and broken physical infrastructure.
As Climate Families NYC notes:
NYC already has access to BILLIONS of dollars through IRA and city funding for electrifying and upgrading school buildings, but city agencies and politicians are letting the money sit there while our schools flood and fill with smoke.
New York City's school buildings alone account for nearly 20% of the city's public building emissions. Right now, schools rely on dirty fossil fuels to power and heat classrooms, and our 100-year-old infrastructure desperately needs repairs and upgrades. We’re fighting alongside youth, labor, and environmental justice organizations for Green, Healthy Schools so all students can breathe clean air and attend school safely.
In a city where the most extreme weather day so far this school year was not February’s snow-day-turned-remote-learning-day but rather a late September rainstorm that caused flooding in over 150 NYC schools, the climate crisis necessitates rebuilding infrastructure that – like those newly planted crabapples – is more resistant to the challenges of the future, and that contributes to reducing emissions.
As those urging climate action say, “later is too late.” Repairing infrastructure shouldn’t require a miracle. But it will require mustering the will to address multi-generational problems now: so that subsequent generations can sit in the shade of a flowering crabapple tree, learn in beautiful classrooms that inspire the highest levels of learning, and attend school in buildings that contribute to a green and healthy future. Current K-12 students confined to desolate classrooms and schools have sadly experienced the consequences of societal abandonment and neglect for far too long, but if we act now, there’s still a chance for a brighter tomorrow.
If you’ve gotten this far: thank you. Please consider adding your name to this petition in support of funding green and healthy schools.