Martin Raskin taught in the New York City public schools for many years, and he is now retired. He is obsessed with collecting memorabilia about the city’s public schools, especially his own elementary school, P.S. 202 in East New York, Brooklyn. His apartment, the New York Times writes, is a shrine to the public schools.

Maybe there is someone more crazy in love with New York City’s public schools than Martin Raskin, but who else would collect a panel of hundred-year-old brass steam heat switches from Brooklyn’s Manual Training High School that closed in 1959? Or load up his car trunk with a boiler gauge from P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village?

“I’m a little bit compulsive,” admitted Mr. Raskin, a 77-year-old retired teacher who taught at Canarsie High School in Brooklyn and the Queens School for Career Development and is aflame with ardor for all things Board of Education, which…