The population growth of the 1940s and '50s led to Fort Wayne Community Schools' own baby boom in the '60s and '70s, when almost two-thirds of the district's schools were built. And today, just like Social Security, they're falling apart.

Last July, cost-conscious petitioners soundly defeated a $500 million plan to renovate buildings across the district over a five-year period, including all of FWCS' schools. Opponents of the proposal said it was too much money that wouldn't go directly to academics. One year later, FWCS — the second-largest district in the state with 32,000 students — is left putting Band-Aids on problems that have to be fixed.

Infrastructure — space, plumbing, masonry, and heating and cooling — represents the main problem. The nature of it forces Superintendent Wendy Robinson to consider a worst-case scenario. “If the system fails, I have no place to put the kids at Snider,” Robinson said of the 43-year-old school, where more than $40 million in fixes and additional space were proposed.

Of the 53 schools FWCS has built since the early 1900s still open today, Miami Middle School is the newest. It was built in 1976, or 14 years before the graduates of the Class of 2008 were born. The average age of the buildings is 50, with Anthis Career Center topping the list at 107 years old.

Evert Mol, who spearheaded the defeat of the building plan, said if the district had only asked for less money and done a better job prioritizing the most-needed repairs for the community, it would not be in this predicament.

“To me, fixing buildings that need to be fixed is justified,” Mol said. “Going beyond that is another story. I feel bad that they can't do anything, but they brought this on themselves.”

When FWCS proposed its building plan, nearly every building had heating and plumbing problems, required improvements to the masonry, and needed additional space to accommodate students. That hasn't changed.

“How do we cope?” Robinson asked. “We don't. None of those buildings fixed themselves. They're now in worse shape than they were a year ago.”

FWCS Facilities Director Steve Parker said the deterioration of the buildings is not due to poor maintenance, but rather to the fact that so many are coming of age about the same time. Thirty-four of 53 were built in the 1960s and '70s.

“We're on borrowed time,” Parker said.

The following five schools are where the district says the problems are most dire.

The noise of a nearby classroom could be heard as fourth-grader Kaila Ortiz practiced math with her teacher at the top of the stairwell in Nebraska Elementary School. It was “pretty weird,” as described by Ortiz, but it was a typical day for Title I assistant teacher Deb Layson, whose designated area is atop those stairs.

“It's space,” she said. “If you need space, you take what you can get.”

In a school of 270 students, overcrowding isn't the issue. Classroom space is.

The school lacks the available classrooms to accommodate special reading groups or tutoring sessions. As a solution, teachers are placed in the corners of hallways or spare spaces on landings in stairwells or even in corners of the resource room with small tables and perhaps a filing cabinet to store supplies.

“We make it work. We take what we have, and we go with the flow,” said Principal Federa Smith.

This setup has been the norm at the school for at least eight years, but hopes of more space linger.

“I can think of some situations that would be better,” Layson said, explaining having her own classroom would give her the quiet and less disruptive space in which to work.

The space problem extends into nearly every one of FWCS' 13 Title I schools, which receive additional federal funding because at least 40 percent of their students get free or reduced-price lunches. The extra funds, however, translate to more teaching assistants, not more space.

“We just take it all in stride,” Smith said. “You just don't miss what you've never had.”

Snider High School is one of the highest-performing high schools in the district academically, but a major burst of its aging, rusted pipes could shut it down. Concrete tunnels run the length of the school, lined with pipes carrying water to heat and cool the building. With gallons of water running beneath the school, a major problem would require a boat, building foreman Tim Freimuth said.

“Stuff isn't made to last as long as we've had it for,” Freimuth said. The heating and cooling system was installed in 1965 when the school was built. “What I'm afraid of is something major is going to happen.”

Rust is corroding levers and insulation is falling off the pipes in a damp basement, which also serves as a storage area for the school. Up in the classrooms, the ventilation systems break down frequently, requiring new parts. The problem? Those parts are no longer available because the company that made them doesn't exist anymore.

“You make your own part if you can't find one,” Freimuth said. The levers are the shutoff valves for the system, but the building managers are afraid to use them too often for fear they will snap. Worst-case scenario: The school would close.

“You still have to educate,” said Robinson. “People think, ‘Oh, you're just crying wolf.' It's not in our best interest to disrupt the education of children.”

Walking through this school of 2,039 students, one would never guess there was a problem. Floors are clean, damaged ceiling tiles are always replaced, and corroded pipes are hidden behind ceiling tiles or inside ventilation systems.

“People come into the building and say, ‘Wow, this is immaculate,'” Robinson said. “Yes, of course our buildings are clean. … You don't see a corroded pipe when you're walking through the building with a group of second-graders.”

It's an echo of Snider's problems at Memorial Park Middle School, which was built one year later.

“Once again we have a school that looks clean, but it's the things that you don't see,” Parker said.

It's the corroded pipes throughout the school, it's the exterior window-wall system coming loose from the building, and it's the failing ventilation systems with no replacement parts.

“We try to do the best we can with the situation we have. Hopefully there will be some kind of change soon,” said Assistant Principal Mikki White-Curry.

A window-wall system (sometimes called a curtain wall) — windows combined with metal sheets in a vertical column format to form the full exterior wall — was installed as a cheap alternative to typical masonry in the '60s.

“We lose a lot of heat this way,” Parker said. The joints also have weakened in the system, which has begun to fall off the building.

Parker said minor repairs have been made to keep the building together. It houses 635 students.

Harrison Hill Elementary School is one of the oldest buildings in the district. It has stood south of downtown since 1924, changing from a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade to an elementary-only school in 1971. But a change in face didn't do much to lift this building.

Harrison Hill ranks as one of the worst facilities in the district, shortly behind Snider, according to Parker.

A 20-year-old heating and cooling system sits in the basement next to an old coal room, remnants of days gone by.

“We plan to open (the room) next year as a haunted house,” Principal Linda Sneeringer said with a wink, referring to the dark, damp conditions.

The school has a unique character, with lockers also available to students (not typical in elementary schools). But despite an effort to hide flaws with file cabinets and desks, the building's age still shows.

“The water is coming in through the masonry,” Parker said pointing to bubbles and cracks in the walls in classrooms where the plaster is failing. “The whole building has got problems.”

Windows are single-paned and drafty during the winter, requiring duct tape to insulate them, Sneeringer said. A gym teacher had to use a bucket underneath his radiator to catch water before it formed puddles on his floor. The gymnasium doubles as the cafeteria, and sections of walls in classrooms are cut out to allow teachers to share sinks.

Staff called this a way of life at the school. Still, Sneeringer was optimistic. “We have great students and staff. We have never had to shut down the building for any problems.”

The rumble of a nearby quarry can be felt in this 79-year-old school. Thank goodness blasting doesn't happen during school hours — most days. But this is just one of many things rattling Elmhurst High School, located on one of the busiest roads in the city, Ardmore Avenue.

In FWCS' first draft of a building plan, it proposed closing Elmhurst and sending the students to Wayne High School, built more than 40 years after Elmhurst. Despite the district pulling the idea from the plan it pitched to the public, closing Elmhurst remains an option.

“If you look at the enrollment and the dollars and cents, it just makes sense,” Parker said. About 1,000 students are currently enrolled at Elmhurst and 1,048 at Wayne, which has room to expand and accommodate the consolidation.

Parker said keeping land-locked Elmhurst open, however, would mean enlarging crowded hallways, replacing the nearly 50-year-old steam heating system, replacing single-paned windows and improving the flow of foot traffic for handicap accessibility.

“When you take on a big high school, it can get to be expensive,” he said.

It would be a daunting task considering the age of the building, FWCS officials say. Only two other high schools, North Side and South Side, are older than Elmhurst, and both have been renovated in the last 10 years. But for the community, the age or the condition of the building was not the major concern; it was the history in the school.

“For 79 years this has been a fixture in the town,” Parker said. “It's always been here for folks. This high school has always been a part of their community.”