Hills & Gardens: Re-Repair of P.S. 29 Questioned
By Trudy Whitman
In the summer of 2000, I wrote in these pages about a months-long renovation taking place at P.S. 29, my across-the-street neighbor on Baltic. The job included roof repair, repointing, and asbestos removal. The building was scaffolded and covered with black protective mesh on all four sides. It was noisy, dusty work, but neighbors understood that repairs on the old school building were necessary — even shamefully overdue. When my children attended P.S. 29, a number of the fifth-floor classrooms were unusable because the leaky roof led to sections of the plaster ceiling falling to the floor.
But then summer ended, children returned to school, and the construction timetable shifted; crews were busy from late afternoon through late evening. It was never too late, it seemed, for a workman to take a drill to the old mortar between the red bricks of the facade. Neighbors’ calls to the School Construction Authority (SCA) led only to notices in our mailboxes specifying that work wouldn’t cease until midnight — an hour later than we were initially told.