Leahy: Bricks and mortar may be key in the Virginia governor’s race

The Virginia gubernatorial race is on everyone’s minds:

Ed Gillespie and Ralph Northam say they will do great things as governor to make Virginia’s public schools great again.

They talk about it in op-eds. Gillespie’s campaign even released a charming video of him answering questions, read to him by children, from the state’s Standards of Learning test.
But there’s a bigger problem these productions don’t address: School buildings that are in such bad condition, they would give Freddy Krueger nightmares.

A news item in the Richmond Times-Dispatch illustrates one of the worst cases, the 100-year-old George Mason Elementary School in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood.

For those who don’t know about George Mason Elementary, it’s infested with “rat feces, a persistent stench of urine, and air quality that prompts some staff members working in the building to wear surgical masks.”

At a meeting Monday night, the school board weighed three options: 1) relocate the students to other schools before the beginning of class on Sept. 5; 2) close the school and build a new facility at a cost of roughly $30 million; or 3) make temporary repairs, keep the kids in the building and monitor air quality once a month to make sure it isn’t toxic.

Read more of Norm Leahy’s column at The Washington Post.