Board's move won't be forgotten

Let us be clear. There is no structural problem with the Harding School building that could not be reasonably and not expensively corrected if the Oklahoma City School Board cared to protect the tradition of excellence associated with the building.

This appears to be a land grab for a developer, by fiat, one of the few pieces of property of any size within the renewing Uptown-Paseo-Crown Heights neighborhoods, now that individual investors have improved an area previously allowed to disintegrate. Harding Charter Prep has a lease that runs through 2041, which the school board has chosen to ignore/subvert, arbitrarily ramrodding a fait accompli down the throats of students, parents, teachers, alumni and the neighborhood.

Harding Charter Prep is the No. 1 public high school in Oklahoma, like its predecessor, Harding High School. It has become a shining light of educational excellence in the city — and probably therefore an embarrassment to the other schools. These students are chosen by lottery; they pass no entrance exams, but have earned millions in college scholarships.

Alumni and corporations have invested some $2.5 million in the building in the past 15 years. Supporters have taken what had become a derelict building and turned it into an inspirational example of what hard work, diligence and proper management and leadership can create.

Harding stands as a symbol of all that, a tradition of academic excellence, just as those old buildings at Harvard, Princeton, the OU Library, Old North at UCO ... symbols of the dedication and achievement of all who have gone before. Not only is it a beautiful building, but it's an exemplar of all that can be good in public education. If you tore down those buildings on OU's North Oval, would you still have the same sense of history and importance of the school? Or at Yale: In the middle of downtown New Haven, a few old buildings stand for something unique, something more than the mundane, something that stirs the heart and mind.

There are rumors that developers stand ready to bulldoze all that; the school board is selling out its heritage for 30 pieces of gold.

There no longer may be any choice; the Harding Charter Board is moving on, but we will not forget. If you on the Board of Education think you will be re-elected, think again. Some schools to be closed may have been improved with MAPS money. City council, if you think we will ever again give you free rein with that money, think again. Administrators, if you think you will ever again get the corporate contributions given to Edgemere, Harding and other schools, when you so randomly and arbitrarily close them, think again.

We will not forget.