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School Cell Tower Debate Points To Deeper Problem

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By DEREK MAUL Tribune correspondent

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 4, 2009

Question: What's 100 feet tall, looks like a huge flagpole, keeps people connected, produces income and generates controversy?

Answer: A brand new cell tower at a school near you.

The towers, which are used to facilitate wireless telecommunications, are cropping up all over Hillsborough County and constitute a key link in cell-phone networks. The land the cell towers are built on is typically leased, providing substantial income to property owners, including schools and other neighborhood organizations.

If all this sounds too good to be true, a win-win situation where the entire community benefits, then you will be glad to hear that parent groups at more than one elementary school are up in arms. The problem, it appears, is the perceived possibility of some undocumented danger possibly caused by exposure to radio frequency emissions.

My initial reaction has been, give me a break. When I was young, kids danced in the spray when the DDT truck went by. We drank unfiltered water, didn't use sunscreen, the dishes were never sterilized and we ate nutrition-free cereals. Sorry, mum.

When I was a schoolteacher, I occasionally wondered if maybe some parents would be happier if their children were laminated, transported to school in a bubble, handled with kid gloves and certified "uncontaminated" before being returned to the perfect environments in which they were being raised.

On closer consideration, however, I think these particular parents might be onto something - not so much with regard to the cell towers, but concerning our increasing tendency to opt out of public funding and oblige individual schools to cultivate their own sources of revenue.

Education is possibly the best use of taxpayer dollars ever conceived. If we want to stimulate our economy, we can never do better than to invest in the future of human capital. And other sources of income can be inconsistent. A Brandon school might raise $100,000 via the PTA, while another campus may be lucky to bring in five percent of that.

The great genius of public education is our universal commitment to providing equal access to learning, regardless of family income. A school principal negotiating sweet deals with the cell tower people so that already privileged children can utilize additional high-tech toys simply widens the gap public education was designed to bridge.

One more question: What is critically important to our future, definitive of our community, worthy of the best we can offer and more precious than any bank on Wall Street?

Answer: Each and every child in Hillsborough County.

Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@gmail.com.

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