Reason to close the building #1,267

The "Tower of Power" (or the Tower of Terror as I like to call it) is going to be demolished. Possibly even as early as this summer. It will be knocked down so that a new school can be built for Ward 7 (Woodson is the only HS in Ward 7, unlike Anacostia which has 2).

Now aside from the lack of ability to control the tower (too many staircases for kids to run and hide in, needing a security guard on each of the 7 floors at all times -and usually needing 2 per floor to keep it actually monitored - which of course has never and will never happen), having kids walk up 7 flights of stairs to class in 4 minutes or less after lunch, the obvious fact that it is hideous, the whole building only having a few exits to escape from a fire, etc. etc. we have YET another reason to close the building.

Over the weekend the pipes burst on the 4th floor. Now apparently this is a common occurrence. Last year the school was forced to relocate for 2 weeks to another school due to massive amounts of flooding (although apparently the school they used before is now being used by a charter so there isn't anywhere for Woodson to go if we need to be moved). You can imagine how moving to another building affects attendance (the students are even less likely to show). Luckily for me, my room did not sustain any damage (although rooms around the corner from me did. The 2nd and 3rd floor (B&F basically) were hit the hardest. So now I will have to be very careful in where I put things in the room in case a pipe bursts above or (heaven forbid) in my room. 4 classrooms had to be closed for the day, since there is too much standing water, materials were obviously destroyed in some rooms - including a few computers, but the 2nd floor was pretty much cleaned up when I arrived (apparently it took over 14 hours to do that). So there ya go, yet another reason why this crappy building needs to be torn down and a new one put in its place.

Of course that does leave the question that everyone has been asking... where do we go while they build the new building?...