Touring the halls of the long-closed Central High School last weekend was a rare and special opportunity.
The building was, and still shows traces of being, a knock-out. Designed by architect Archimedes Russell and erected in 1903, the school graduated its last class in 1975 and enjoyed a brief but doomed second life when the city sold it to a developer more than 10 years ago.
Many rooms in the building look as though workers could be on lunch break, tools and hardware sitting on half-torn-up floors.
The Preservation Association of Central New York and Central High advocates like Sehl Burns are justified in both their love for the structure and their belief that, sitting dilapidated and unused, it is a waste of a valuable resource.
But is now — when the Syracuse City School District is threatening to cut hundreds of teaching positions — the time to push for pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a beautiful but impractical building?
The point can be argued back and forth (and probably will be) for years, until finally someone buys the building and fills it with condos or it’s razed and another parking garage goes in.
The bottom line is we’re dangerously close to shifting the focus off of what’s best now for the students.
In the meantime, the school district has plans to sign a three-year contract with Sharon Contreras to replace outgoing Superintendent Daniel Lowengard.
Whether Contreras was the district’s first choice, or they had intended to go with Bernard Taylor Jr. before he pulled his name from the hat, Contreras was our first choice and we’re excited to watch her lead the district.
