The Editors of the Trib weighed in on the issue of rubber tire playground mulch today with a special emphasis urging the Board to pay attention to parents while noting a recent raw wound:
On March 31, over the protests and objections of those concerned parents and others, the district’s elected School Board voted not to waive policies prohibiting it from selling an abandoned school property to an entity that might reuse it as a school property. In other words, no selling to the competition. The vote slammed the door on a $14.2 million offer for the five-years-empty, hilltop Central High School campus, an offer that could have led to the high school being used again by Edison charter schools. Vocal and outspoken concerned parents — and, again, others — weren’t shy with their criticism of the vote. It continues to pour in.
I’ve written about mulch in several previous posts.
For me the decision to spend up to $400,000 for a complete replacement would be a lot easier if we had spare cash lying around. At this point the main reason would be to give parents peace of mind. This is an important consideration despite the absence of solid evidence of the rubber mulch’s threat to the children playing in it. Our District seems to be developing a reputation for putting parents off as a nuisance. We keep losing students and families. We need to stop the hemorrhaging.
Our guest, Mr. Kelly, from the Minnesota Dept of Health had no information suggesting that the mulch was hazardous but noted that there are several studies in play to research this question. They have yet to report results. Under any circumstances I think it would be prudent to wait until they report their findings. Coincidentally when I asked Kelly if the State was trying to insure that the mosquito breeding discarded tires in Minnesota were being used for mulch production he explained that he started his public service career in Minnesota helping get rid of the old tire stockpiles for environmental reasons.
We did have a long meeting but with no really new information except that the figure of $300,000 to $400,000 for the switch to wood mulch seemed to be more certain. It had been more speculative prior to this meeting. Parents have offered their help to keep costs down and I can imagine them knocking $100,000 off of the price tag. Still, we are facing $3 million in unpleasant cuts this year. Something else critical would have to give for us to pay for wood mulch.
I’m going to stick with my agnosticism on the subject for a while longer.
