Suburbs

The suburbs wanted in the school business. Wanted to take responsibility to educate the students in their cities and not be reliant on the decisions of a countywide Board of Education.

Ah, but there is a price tag for that freedom and autonomy, and Germantown is at the crossroads of those necessary decisions.

Houston High needs updating. It needs to present a modern-day look 35 years after it opened. Frankly, the exterior looks a whole lot like the days in the late 1990s when a lanky John Aitken was principal roaming the hallways on Wolf River Boulevard near Germantown’s border with Collierville.

The lone high school in the Germantown school district needs a facelift. More space. It needs improvements in the academic space. It needs to keep up with the Joneses.

The biggest renovation to the building may have come after the 1994 tornado through that area of Germantown ripped off the school’s northwest corner.

Meanwhile Collierville has built a new high school, and Lakeland continues to add a grade to Lakeland Prep, welcoming its first senior class later this summer. The high schools in other suburbs were built after Houston High or have made significant changes.

Of course, such work means money. A lot of money. And Germantown should pay the price. Maybe not the $100 million the school board requested, but certainly, more than the $8 million initially committed by the city and even the eventual increase to $10 million.

Unless the city wants to watch the campus slowly get older and more rundown as was the decrease of Germantown High. There were enough expansions and annexations that it seemed Germantown High could eventually run out of letters to designate another building.

Germantown High stood as a great example of deferred maintenance. And plenty of people were upset that Shelby County Schools wouldn’t fix the fixable.

When the suburb split from the county, they lost Germantown High, but ended up with the newer Houston High building for the municipal district lone high school.

But “newer” now is 36 years old. The city took over the school 11 years ago. I’m not saying improvements haven’t been made, but it is time to give it a good renovation. Some plastic surgery.

Will it cost money? You bet it will. Plenty of money. But residents should have known that was a tradeoff to having their own school district. Those costs fall to Germantown now. I think most people did knew the day of reckoning would come for Houston High.

It’s just that the reality of the situation has arrived. There will be those who grumble about the idea of additional property taxes to cover the cost. The argument about fixed incomes. Or empty-nesters who don’t have children in Houston High.

But the importance of a good school in a community is paramount, and there ought to be a way to reach a compromise on the school system’s wants and the city’s obligation to provide an updated campus. - Suburbs editor Clay Bailey

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