Greenville will do the right thing
By Bob Robinson 

I was substituting in a second grade class when the storm hit. Lightning, thunder, rain coming down in sheets. A couple of the children got scared, started crying. I got them calmed down, but then two others had to go to the bathroom. 

Woodland, to handle overcrowding, uses modules to provide classroom space to the student population. Second grade students are in modules that don’t have bathrooms inside the units. 

The bathrooms are only a few feet away, but the walkway is exposed to the elements. I couldn’t let them go. As will often happen with 20 - plus or minus - 7- and 8-year-olds, what one has to do catches on like an epidemic with others in the class. A half-dozen kids had to use the bathroom. And they couldn’t. 

More tears. 

We had a lesson in getting young minds on other topics until it was safe to take the class out for a bathroom break. 

“Teachers, please be advised that due to a plumbing problem, bathrooms and water fountains cannot be used… we are working on fixing the problem.” 

I had a class of kindergartners this time… a little more difficult to try the “young minds on other topics” diversion with 5- and 6-year olds. 

Even more tears. 

Bathrooms were functional a couple hours later but there was no drinking water for the rest of the day. 

I’ve been in all the buildings. South is the oldest at the ripe old age of 101. Next is the junior high, which was built in 1923. East was built in 1950, Woodland in 1956. The high school – Greenville’s newest campus - was built the same year I graduated from high school… 1962. 

My first computer course as a freshman that year at Texas A&M was in a main frame that took up a city block. In 1972, a Texas A&M researcher talked about typewriters that would be connected to television sets and have the capability of sending messages around the world. 

People thought he was nuts. 

Greenville’s newest campus was ten years old by then. 

East and South Schools were built before the District started providing lunches on campus. They were neighborhood schools, so the kids went home for lunch. The gymnasiums in these buildings have the double duty of providing lunchroom space for the students. Many classrooms are tight… too many desks for the size of the room. 

All of the buildings have heating and cooling issues. 

Before I started subbing at Greenville Schools, I remember two GHS seniors asking me a question that I couldn’t answer. 

Not the first time that has happened I might add, but this one stuck with me. 

“Why won’t Greenville support us?” 

It was after the latest attempt to get a new school levy passed had failed. I had no answer for them. 

I grew up in a world where adults wanted to pass on to their children a better life than the ones they had. That was my goal… not sure how well I managed it, but I tried. 

People have told me that we’ve changed. We no longer care about leaving the world a better place for our kids, that we really mean it when we say “it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for them.” 

I don’t believe it. 

Spend a day with a classroom of these precious children… especially the little ones; eager to learn, curious and innocent. Watch some of these same little ones blossom into smart, talented young men and women who will be our leaders in the future. 

I think you will have a tough time believing it, too. 

This time around, Greenville will do the right thing. 

Greenville will support its youth.