The Pix: The Mess Inside One School
BY BUDDY NEVINS
What are conditions like in your child’s school?
After seeing these Browardbeat.com pictures, you might want to go and check it out for yourself.
These were taken at Castle Hill Elementary in Lauderhill last week. Amazingly enough, school officials knew they are going to be inspected by the system’s Diversity Committee.
There were taken with a cell phone, so some are a little blurry. You will still get the idea. Castle Hill needs someone to both organize and clean it.
Here are beans in a tray stored next to dirty water in the food preparation area.
Yummy!
Why bother hanging the fire extinguisher on the wall as required, when you can shove it against the wall on the floor, amid books and a teacher’s cell phone charger?
No Shelves? Who needs them, when books can be stored on the stove?
Diversity Committee members were allegedly told that the sprinklers don’t need to be cleaned. The reason? If there is a fire, the grime will come off when the sprinkler sprays water.
March 24th, 2014 at 9:18 am
This obviously needs to be addressed, but… Was the Diversity Committee there to inspect the kitchens and general cleanliness?
FROM BUDDY:
The Diversity Committee is designed to insure children at all schools have equal resources and opportunities to learn. Pointing out that some children go to school in a cluttered and/or dirty facility while others have new, sparkling clean buildings is part of their mission.
March 24th, 2014 at 10:04 am
Where are the Health Department Inspection Reports, the Fire Department Evaluations (Code Enforcement)and the Supervisor for this Department?
Our city Golf Course, the Plantation Preserve gets inspected right along with local Restaurants, and sad to say has had some issues that have been corrected. What remains is the fact that schools MUST be inspected, and violations be written up so that they can be corrected!
The SBBC checks roofs, maintenance items, why would someone let it get this bad? You and I know it didn’t happen overnight.
Time to check ALL the schools, and NOW, before someone gets sick, I am sick just looking at it, and Fire safety being compromised? What’s that all about?
Thanks Buddy….
Rico Petrocelli
March 24th, 2014 at 11:08 am
not much new news here! Same as in decades past!
March 24th, 2014 at 4:12 pm
I don’t see any big surprises here. This is County-run public schools after all.
I wouldn’t expect anything different in terms of overall quality of a food facility that serves free or reduced lunches.
March 24th, 2014 at 5:15 pm
No wonder parents want choice to send their kids to private school plus charters schools.
March 24th, 2014 at 5:16 pm
If people at the school are connected with either a board member(s) or administration, nothing changes. It was ever thus.
Read the Audit Committee minutes and see which schools are chronics. Then connect the dots.
I wish the families of the children who attend that school would take up the torches and pitchforks. But too often they’re not organized, some working two or three jobs, some who don’t care or don’t know.
March 24th, 2014 at 5:35 pm
Nora ,
Please reappoint me so I can get a contract “consulting.” I will sell them some Herbalife and that will fix everything!
March 24th, 2014 at 9:00 pm
Amen, Sunrise parent!
March 24th, 2014 at 9:11 pm
There is a Safety Department and a Food Service Department at the District. It is there responsibility to check for fire hazards and food inspections. Looks as if someone dropped the ball. The school custodian should also be responsible for the cleanliness of the school. These are supposed to be checked by supervisors from District Maintenance who go from school to school with reports of any outstanding problems at the school. I am wondering how these were missed.
March 24th, 2014 at 9:45 pm
Are the students making academic progress or are these lapses in maintenance and food prep indicators of neglect in educating also?
March 24th, 2014 at 10:46 pm
Charlotte G and Becky B –
school students, parents, taxpayers need more like you, yet in the face of Buddy’s ‘Expose’, what will change?
Students deserve better, even if they are flunking out or making C’s, because hundreds of millions of dollars (TAX DOLLARS) fund this inepitude and mismanagement
March 25th, 2014 at 9:59 am
Perhaps the school Board members should be visiting their appointed schools instead of holding ad nausem meetings to hear themselves talk. Perhaps the Administration should worry more about schhols and children and less about their coveted useless “programs” and all the buddies they appointed to supposedly run the useless programs.
March 25th, 2014 at 2:06 pm
Robin B. once visited a school. She whizzed through a couple of classrooms, then addressed a group of students in an exceptional education room. She spoke to them for about 10 minutes about how they needed to get ready for college.
Those particular students were teenagers with severe learning disabilities. None could read over a third grade level. The dysfunction of our schools starts with people in charge.
March 25th, 2014 at 4:54 pm
Castle Hill Elementary is in a low-income neighborhood; 96% of the students receive a free or reduced-price lunch. It’s a “Title I” school (high percentage of students near poverty). The student population is 97.15% African-American. In 2011 it was rated as a “B” school, in 2012 it was a “C” school, and its preliminary rating for 2013 is “D”.
http://school-ratings.com/Florida/schools/Castle_Hill_Elementary_School.html
FROM BUDDY:
That is the point. Castle Hill students should go to class in facilities that are kept in the same condition as schools in Weston or Parkland.
March 28th, 2014 at 5:07 pm
Exactly, Buddy, the conditions should be the same. And when they aren’t, the principal needs to be held accountable. By the school board members,by administration, by the Diversity Committee and by the parents. In this case I maintain there’s a political connection that’s preempting accountability.
March 28th, 2014 at 10:31 pm
When I was first a project manager at Broward Schools in the Facilities and Construction Management Department, one of my first schools was Dillard High School – the football field complex with tennis courts, drivers ed range and baseball fields. I also was responsible for the Basketball gym with the classes there. This was about the time one of the Board members came through and found rats in the schools. I spoke with the principal and they showed me over 100 work orders to District Maintenance to correct problems at the school including the flooding of the Gym floor 4 times because the catch basins had not been cleaned out and the water was backing up into the Gym. This was finally straightened out by District Maintenance. The other problem was the poor work performance of the head custodian at the school. Efforts to fire him were stopped by the union representing the school custodians. There are several areas that need to be investigated to get to the bottom of this, including the ones I mentioned above. Someone needs to care. I heard from parents regarding the leaking of the roof at Northeast High School and also the rat infestation there about 6 months ago. With limited funding, very little was done about it. The District needs to stop waiting for a major school construction project to remove and replace roofs. These should have a separate priority with a separate roofing department (not the District Maintenance roofing department who refuse to get training or not given the funds for training to learn how to install to building code standards). The separate roofing department would have a plan reviewer, issue roof permits only and have roofing contracts and contractors who only do one activity at the school in a very timely manner. If this isn’t done, the damage to the school is immeasurable – not only to the interior finishes of the school, causing mold and mildew but to the furniture, fixtures and equipment. This doesn’t even address the high priority of students, teachers and staffs’ health conditions with upper respiratory illnesses, autoimmune diseases and severe allergies. District Maintenance use to have area supervisors who visited the schools to check for the cleanliness of each school. What happened to them?
May 2nd, 2014 at 12:16 pm
Castlehill have passed all health inspections. Those bean are not stored there they were just prepped for serving, another bean pan in the sink was just emptied and prepped for washing including the bean cans in the sink to be rinsed and prepped for recycling. Not a sink of dirty water. Any one can see the empty pan had bean in it.
We feed a lot of students, in a short time. Castlehill cafeteria take pride in the prepping and cleanliness of their kitchen. So please focus on more important and safety issue at these schools ( The contractors and construction of the schools
May 2nd, 2014 at 12:22 pm
Castlehill passed all health inspections.
Any one can see those beans are being prepped to be served and the pan in the sink is another bean pan prepped for cleaning including the bean cans being prepped for recycling not a sink of dirty water. Please focus on the safety issue in the school.
May 2nd, 2014 at 12:26 pm
Castlehill cafeteria passed all Health inspection. Focus on the safety issue found.
May 2nd, 2014 at 12:43 pm
Castlehill passes all Health inspections. Most schools have safety issue, focus on the ones that was found there instead of a pan of bean being prepped for serving and a bean pan in the sink prepped for cleaning including the bean cans being prepped for recycling. That is not a sink of dirty water. Please get you issues in priority