Our $600,000 Artificial Turf Field: Can Our Kids Sleep on It? If the Board Continues its Current Direction, They May Have To

By Daniel Kurz

Ever since I posted my first blog late last week, there has been a good deal of response on Fair Lawn’s Patch. I even overheard three people talking about it while getting coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts this morning over on Fair Lawn Avenue. So there’s a buzz, and that’s a good thing.

To bring all up to speed, my last blog concerned a recent $600,000 Board of Ed vote to approve the construction of an artificial field for Fair Lawn High School. For a relatively small district like Fair Lawn, this is no small expense. So it was only fair to present readers with the fact that this spending was the result of a choice. It wasn’t inevitable and it wasn’t necessary and it didn’t have to be.   

Now these are good people, the Board’s members. They don’t get paid. They work hard for the community. They’re honest and really care about the kids. I have no doubt about this. They’re not corrupt. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they’re stuck in 1956. From their replies to my blog, it is obvious that they simply do not know what’s coming, economically, for our kids. They simply have no idea, so let’s paint them a picture of the near future, and why providing a networked laptop, which is at the center of the instructional day, is absolutely essential to their economic survival. It’s not the solution to the world’s problems, a networked laptop. I’m not going to try to deceive you. It is simply getting kids to today’s starting line of life.

In 1956 Grease was the word. High school was king. High schools were quite literally the cultural centers of suburban towns like Fair Lawn, Paramus and Franklin Lakes. Kids went to high school to learn and socialize and, unfortunately, ruthless pounce on each other in their own self-made cliques and groups. But this aside, they learned a little bit of everything in school, from writing English papers to repairing cars to acting in the school play. Some kids got to be heroes on the playing field, while others were heartlessly bullied. Prom was the culmination of all; literally, the “last dance” before marriage. Anyway, from this environment, most kids emerged unscathed and at least somewhat prepared for the prosperous economy of the post-war era.

There were a lot of jobs for all kinds of people, from being a cashier to working in a local Paterson factory to the professions. Sure, none of these jobs were going to make you rich, but you could live on the income. You could raise a family, buy a tidy house off Plaza Road, enjoy a vacation down the Shore in Wildwood. You could spend Saturdays with your family walking downtown, on River Road, on a nice day, visiting local businesses while taking your kids for ice cream. And if you lost your job, well, that was unfortunate, but the want-ads were bursting with opportunity and the city of Fair Lawn was directly linked to the center of the Universe of the post-war era, that being Manhattan. Trains left on the half hour from Radburn station. If you couldn’t find a job in town, well, all of New York beckoned, Twin Towers and all.

Newsflash: That world is gone.

Has anyone been to their old haunts in Fair Lawn lately? Have you noticed anything different? Go to Pathmark off Maple Avenue. Sure, it’s still selling all sorts of edible goodies, but when you check out, instead of 20 cashiers buzzing away, what do you see? One, perhaps two cashiers working. Oh, there are still 10 registers, but 8 are now run by computer. They empower the consumer by announcing that they’re “self check-outs.” Empower they do…Pathmark.

Swing by the local Wells Fargo bank. Back in 1956, where our present Board of Education lives, banks were busy places. Filled with dozens of tellers and lines of customers waiting to get money before a long weekend. No more. Now, there is one, perhaps two tellers, with the rest being replaced by ATM’s and online banking. Automation and progress, I guess.

Head over to Paterson, our neighbor. Yes, believe or not we are directly bordered by that currently poverty-stricken, crime challenged, sad metropolis. In ’56 and ’66 and even ’76 there were factories humming there. They made all kinds of things, from paints to curtains to handguns. It wasn’t a pretty place to work, no doubt, but you could make money there. No more. Now the factories have fled for places like China and Vietnam and all we have left are looming, crumbling brick ruins. Ruins that are a mile from our homes here in Fair Lawn, though we rarely take the time out to see them.

Drive down the Garden State Parkway. We all do. The Parkway was constructed in the 1950’s, the decade where our current Board of Education lives. Once its vast toll plazas, aside from causing horrendous traffic, employed thousands of well-paid toll collectors. They made decent paychecks, had health insurance, even pensions. No more. Hello EZPass.

Oh, and for the jobs that continue to exist outside the professions, the going wage is between $8-10 an hour without benefits. You can’t raise a family on that anymore. I doubt you could even afford a one bedroom apartment in Fair Lawn on that salary.

Want more examples? There are plenty of them. And they all point to one disturbing, absolutely inevitable conclusion: the way our kids are going to make money in the near future is either online or closely connected with it. Posting resumes…job interviews…collaborative work…even working at McDonald’s drive thru…all online. All online.

Now here’s the saddest part. Say our district continues to refuse to implement an affordable 1:1 laptop program for its high school students. Suppose the board continues believing that it is in 1956 and pours money into hiring more backslapping administrators and funding organized athletics and building fields of astroturf (wait, isn’t that a trademarked term? Can I use that?). What will await our kids after graduation?

Nothing.

Poverty isn’t noisy. It isn’t busy. It’s the sound of your phone not ringing. It’s the sound of an empty downtown on a Friday night (been to River Road lately?). It’s the sound of a diner with one or two customers, instead of 50. Silence. Yes, there will always be a few stars. There will also be some award the state gives out for standardized test scores. But lets face it, the aim of school is to learn, to get somewhat prepared for what life has in store for you. And economically, and I hate to admit this, it doesn’t look good. So we might as well do right by our kids and ready them for this online world of work. We need to equip them with the most important tool of the 21^st century, the Networked laptop. We need them to collaborate with each other, construct new virtual businesses, to absorb and process vast amounts of information. We need to realize there isn’t much of a future for those who see that 3 p.m. is the end of the school day and June the end of the school year. Life is so much tougher now. They will have to hustle. They will have to work very hard to attain even half of what my parents’ did. And we all know this.

So let’s stop pretending. Let’s get out of the De Lorean and see the modern world for what it is and where it is going. And it’s going, ceaselessly, directly, almost ruthlessly, online.