The construction of the elementary and middle school on Peslmüllerstraße doesn’t seem venerable. This is due to the building’s ailing facade and the seventies style of the school complex. But if you enter the school yard via the main entrance, the impression changes. Square practical architecture looks different. Especially the roof shapes with their spikes are out of the ordinary. Inside, the concrete gray gives way to a cheerful, colorful play of colors.
Antje Milleder and Christiane Kolb-Radl “love” their school campus. It is very important to the rectors of the Pasing elementary and middle school to clarify this. “We have great students and extremely committed parents.” And an excellent cooperation with the neighboring Bertolt-Brecht-Gymnasium. Almost 350 pupils attend elementary and 414 middle school. But precisely because they put their heart and soul into what they do, the headmistresses demand that the urgently needed renovation and modernization of the complex should finally be pushed forward.
“We have been calling for this for years, but the project has always stalled,” says Milleder. “That can’t happen again.” An opinion that Pasing’s local politicians share across party lines. According to Milleder, the oldest school campus in Bavaria is not lacking in space. The auditorium and corridors of the Pasing elementary and secondary school building are wide, and the classrooms are large compared to many other educational institutions.
There is also space outside, there is enough space for breaks, two table tennis tables, a theatron, and a net swing. There are also four gyms, a swimming pool and a large sports field. But apart from the fact that the members of the school families have to “juggle through the rooms” almost every day due to a lack of certain rooms such as parents’ consulting rooms, differentiation and inclusion rooms or study corridors, as the high school principal Kolb-Radl describes everyday life on Peslmüllerstraße, they are structural deficits meanwhile immense.
Erected in 1971-74, deficiencies in the building were only partially remedied. Windows and patio doors are now leaky, the insulation is crumbling, asbestos-containing Eternit panels, with which parts of the facade are clad, are loose and crumbling. Stephanie Fischer from the primary school’s development association knows that the children fiddle with the substance that is harmful to the respiratory tract and even take records home with them “like trophies”.
Before the 2020 summer vacation, water damage was discovered: Because the water on the roof of a wing could no longer run off, it found its way through the building. “After that we had mold in the administration wing, in the staff room and in classrooms,” says Milleder. “You can wait for that to happen again.”
Advocate for a swift renewal: Stephanie Fischer, chairwoman of the friends ‘association, and Dominique Christ, chairman of the parents’ council.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Because there are puddles again on the roof. The gyms are also leaky, and when it rains or snow it drips – into buckets that are already waiting. Then there is the lack of security. “We urgently need secure entrances with locking systems and bells,” says Milleder. The teachers find openness in itself a good thing. But there are simply too many “celebrations” on the area that is accessible to everyone. “We have graffiti on the walls, Eternit panels that have been destroyed and windows that have been thrown in. In the morning, rubbish and broken glass are lying around.” Condoms and syringes have also been found in the long jump pits. Four years ago it burned in the structurally connected Bertolt-Brecht-Gymnasium, the city administration assumed it was arson.
From the point of view of the school family – the parents’ council and the sponsoring association support the demands of the headmistresses – all of this is particularly annoying because the energetic renovation of the building envelope, including further measures in the outdoor facilities and the expansion of the primary school, were planned in detail in 2018. But then the school grounds were placed under a preservation order – a great honor, which, however, resulted in the project being stopped. In the meantime, however, the school center appears at least in the third school building program, “as a location with preliminary payments for inclusion in a future building program”.
Troubled views: In Pasing, people are still waiting for a refreshment cure for the elementary and middle school on Peslmüllerstraße.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
According to the Department for Education and Sport, a feasibility study will begin next year as a basis for further planning. At Peslmüllerstrasse 6 and 8, according to section spokeswoman Julia Mayer, “a day care center, an all-day four-class elementary school according to the current spatial plan, an all-day four-class middle school and a three-class grammar school based on the learning house concept, taking into account the needs of the sport sector, will be realized”. Which structural variants would come into play will only become apparent in the course of further planning.