Elementary

IIn 1981, I witnessed the destruction Stony Brook Elementary School, where I attended grades K-6.  The Baby-Boomers of the 1950's had gone on to college and career, leaving half-empty classrooms and deteriorating buildings.  Deteriorating,  of course, because there was never any money to update and renovate.The main issue was the front stairway, which had become unsafe to use on a regular basis, and we only used them during fire drills.  The solution?  The Stratford Board of Education decided to tear the whole building down and sell the land to developers.A major problem occurred in the town's public education system when the 1950's Baby-Boomers began to have a baby-boom of their own.  Schools quickly became overcrowded in the 1990s, and continue to be so at the beginning of the second decade of the new millenium.Four ugly duplex houses now stand where I first entered the hallways of public education.  My feelings are ambivalent and ambiguous.  I had some of the worst times of my life there (I wasn't good in math and I was on the low end of the social pecking order) and I must say I felt some satisfaction at watching the wrecking ball tear Stony Brook asunder.  Still, I wish I had thought to at least keep one of the bricks in the wall.